Mairead O’Connor

Mairead is Senior Sector Skills Policy Manager at The Wheel managing its policy and research work in the area of skills development and capacity building for community and voluntary sector organisations and their workforce. Mairead has, since 2020, coordinated the Sector Skills National Training Fund-supported upskilling programmes for workers across this sector, which includes the Training Links Funding scheme, The Leadership Academy, the development of an Apprenticeship in Nonprofit Organisation Studies, and a training offering that reaches over 8,000 trainees each year.

Mairead has sat on the NTF Advisory Group, the EIST ESF+ Monitoring Committee, the National Literacy Coalition, and the Micro-Creds Enterprise Advisory Group.

As well as being an experienced trainer and facilitator, she has coordinated extensive research into sector upskilling needs including the Indecon and Cahill reports and a report on Literacy Needs amongst sector workers. At European level, Mairead sits on a Large Scale Partnership for Skills in the Proximity and Social Economy and has contributed to OECD and European Training Foundation events on stakeholder engagement in the development of National Skills Strategies.