Dr Geraldine Smyth and Mr Chris Gibson have come from opposite ends of Belfast's Falls Road to emerge, partly as a result of their unusual partnership, as significant behind-the-scenes figures in the search for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.
Dr Smyth, brought up near Falls Park, is a Catholic theologian and Dominican sister. For the past four years she has been director of the Irish School of Ecumenics, and last August was appointed head of the Irish branch of the Dominican Order, which also has congregations in southern Africa, South America, the US and Portugal.
Mr Gibson, who grew up as a Presbyterian farmer's son in an area which is now covered by the houses of the Poleglass estate, is currently director of purchasing for the Golden Vale group in Ireland and Britain. He is also on the board of the North's Industrial Development Board and the Northern advisory board of the Bank of Ireland, and was recently appointed a Pro-Vice Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast.
However, he is best known these days as chairman in Northern Ireland of the employers' body, the Confederation of British Industry, and for his energetic leadership of the CBI-IBEC Joint Business Council, which has played a central role in boosting cross-Border trade by 40 per cent since 1992. He believes the Joint Business Council's work has laid "a solid foundation" for a new era of institutional cross-Border co-operation emerging from the Belfast Agreement.
As if this were not enough, he is also a Presbyterian elder and chairman of the board of the Irish School of Ecumenics. He and Dr Smyth work hard to convince the Government that the ISE is worth funding as an internationally respected postgraduate research institution in the fields of peace and reconciliation studies.
About a third of its annual budget of £750,000 comes from the Government. The ISE is currently in discussion with Trinity College Dublin, which validates its qualifications, about cementing a closer relationship which will obtain for the school long-term funding as a mainstream institute of higher education.
The ISE currently has about 60 graduate students from Ireland and abroad, and several hundred adult education students doing part-time courses in Northern Ireland. It also acts as a resource and consultancy body for churches, reconciliation and mediation bodies and education groups working to overcome conflict, prejudice and sectarianism.
People are often shocked when they first hear about the thinking behind ISE's current major research programme, "Moving Beyond Sectarianism".
"This is because we would assert that sectarianism is a basically healthy impulse gone wrong," says Dr Smyth. "It's an impulse for freedom, the right to be different, the right to belong. In the globalised, `McDonaldised' world we now live in, these are laudable motives. People should not have to feel their values are being neutralised and their traditions eroded into some kind of international sameness."
Moving beyond sectarianism should not be "about getting rid of differences, but enabling differences to live together in healthy contact, recognising that diversity and difference need not be destructive, as they have been in Ireland in the past."
What she objects to is the "culture of silence, of polite civility, which ensures that the lines stay fixedly drawn. Not taking the trouble to engage with our enemies or neighbours, whatever we may call them, is a way of holding the past fixed, of holding ourselves captive to ignorance; and ignorance is never preferable to knowledge."
But the Irish School of Ecumenics is not only about Ireland, it also has a strong international and inter-cultural ethos. At present there are students from India, South Korea, Chile, Congo, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Australia, Spain, Germany, the US, Canada and several countries in central and eastern Europe.
Some of these are interested in the Irish conflict, but others come to study the great world religions, Islam and Judaism; or issues of human rights, ethics in international relations and development education.
"Our international and intercultural ethos has kept the school sturdy and healthy and not just fixated on the Irish self-fascination with its conflict," says Dr Smyth. "All these international cross-currents help us in Ireland to see where we fit into the global scene."
Many ISE graduates go into key decision-making jobs in churches and governments around the world. One has a senior human rights position in the South African government; another, an Army officer, is monitoring the Korean border; a third is moderator of the East African Council of Churches; a fourth is back in Rwanda setting up conflict-resolution training programmes.
Irish graduates include Nadette Foley, until recently director of the Irish Refugee Council, and Father Brian Lennon, the co-ordinator of the Northern community and peace group Community Dialogue.
"This is a practical academic institution," says Mr Gibson. "Its graduates have useful qualifications and go out and do real things."
Dr Smyth also sees a job of work to be done in Dublin, with its rapidly growing multicultural population made up of refugees and other foreigners.
"There is a huge amount of ignorance. We've had a big influx of Orthodox from eastern Europe and Muslims from everywhere, and I think the average Irish Catholic and Protestant often wouldn't know the difference. They'd think that because they might dress in a non-Western way they're more or less the same.
"We've no notion that we are on the threshold of a pluralism we're not prepared for, and I think we're about to discover our latent racism. There have already been some ugly warning signs of that. I think education needs to take that on; people like teachers, community leaders, clergy have to be informed."
Mr Gibson lived in the Republic for 20 years up to 1992, working for ICI and rising to become chairman and managing director of its operations in the Republic. He was involved in the formation of Irish Fertilizer Industries, a joint venture between the British company and the semi-State Nitrigin Eireann, which is now a successful, internationally recognised cross-Border company.
He first heard about the Irish School of Ecumenics when its former director, the Rev Alan Falconer, a Scottish Presbyterian who is now a senior figure in the World Council of Churches, came to preach at his church in Dun Laoghaire.
He was then asked to help with fund-raising. He notes that too often people in educational and church organisations approach business people with the attitude: I want your money, I want a contribution. "They do not approach us asking `I want your mind' and your help in a broader sense."
As a believer that "a strong ethical set of standards is the only basis of a civilised society", he decided to lend his broad experience of business and management to the Irish School of Ecumenics.
He has been back in Northern Ireland since 1992. He says his fellow Presbyterians there are a conservative people, preferring the status quo, and at first they tend to ignore his somewhat alarming work for ecumenism and cross-Border co-operation.
However, he believes that when they realise the concrete benefits, in terms of peace and prosperity, of what he does, many of them will quietly realise that change is not so threatening after all.
Northern Protestants will often only support change after the event, he says. "People would say now that, of course, they agreed the Belfast Agreement should be passed, whereas before it they wouldn't have said a word."
He is a great admirer of David Trimble. He believes the Unionist leader's Nobel Peace Prize speech, which he calls "a masterly piece of work", was widely misunderstood in the Republic, and also by sections of his own community.
"What he's saying is that if you really want to build a society fit for Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters, you have to look at issues like Burke's ideas on the development of democracy. He's saying `We do view things differently', and that has to be respected."