Dr Colum Foley brings organisational leadership and management expertise as Judge for National Procurement Awards 2026

Dr Colum Foley, Assistant Professor of Management at DCU Business School, joins the judging panel for the National Procurement Awards 2026, bringing a rare combination of academic rigour, practical industry experience, and a deep understanding of how organisations lead, change, and perform.

Colum's academic credentials are extensive. He holds a B.Comm from University College Cork, an MSc in Management of Operations from DCU, with a master's thesis focused on Managing Change for Sustainability and an EdD in Organisational Leadership, completed with DCU Institute of Education in 2021. His doctoral dissertation, examining the gap between rhetoric, policy, and practice in online learning within Irish higher education, reflects a career-long interest in how institutions articulate ambition and what it actually takes to deliver on it, a question that resonates strongly within the procurement profession.

Before joining DCU Business School in 2020, Colum accumulated over twenty-five years of practical management experience in industry, a foundation that continues to inform how he teaches and how he evaluates. His time in Open Education and Oscail at DCU, as well as across a range of further and higher education institutions, has shaped a teaching philosophy grounded in real-world application rather than theory alone. That approach was formally recognised in 2023, when students nominated him for the PMI Linn Stuckenbruck Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Excellence in Project Management, an acknowledgement that speaks to both his impact in the classroom and the esteem in which his students hold him.

At DCU Business School, Colum lectures across management-related subjects, with particular expertise in operations management, organisational leadership, and change management. These disciplines sit at the heart of what separates strong procurement practice from transformative procurement strategy, making his perspective especially valuable in evaluating submissions that seek to demonstrate not just operational efficiency, but genuine organisational impact.

His appointment to the National Procurement Awards judging panel reflects the calibre of expertise the programme draws upon to ensure a rigorous, credible, and meaningful evaluation process.

The National Procurement Awards 2026 gala will take place on 22nd October at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Santry.

View the full list of judges here at procurementawards.ie/judges, and subscribe to the newsletter to stay up to date with announcements, shortlists, and event news.