Business

Tributes paid to late Deloitte partner 'who called Belfast her home'

THE business community in the north has paid tribute to a Dublin-born accountancy consultant who died at the age of 45 after a short and bravely-born illness.

Kathy Colgan spent most of her working life with Deloitte, where she was a partner in the London office but who called Belfast her home.

She came to Belfast in 1993 for postgraduate study at Queen's University and then started work in Making Belfast Work and then NSPCC before joining Deloitte 17 years ago.

She spent the first seven years of her career in Deloitte working in Northern Ireland and made a huge contribution to the development of the Deloitte NI practice.

Soon after entering the partnership she took on a series of UK leadership roles, and while she then spent the majority of her working time outside Northern Ireland, she was always an energetic advocate of the business in Belfast and of the regional Deloitte team.

Jackie Henry, partner at Deloitte in Belfast and a close personal friend of Ms Colgan, said: "Kathy was a unique individual. She loved life and loved people and made friends everywhere she went. She was always generous with her time, full of positivity and grace and will be sorely missed."

A memorial service takes place on Wednesday at the Titanic Hotel with friends and colleagues coming together with her family in a programme that she asked to be designed as her Desert Island Discs.

Ms Colgan was one of five children, and leaves behind her mother Bernadette and four siblings - her brother Gareth and sisters Ruth, Geraldine and Joan.