Marie O'Connor

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Thursday, 5 December 2024 at 5 pm

TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR COLIN SCOTT, Deputy President and Registrar on 5 December 2024, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa on MARY PATRICIA O’CONNOR
_______________________________

President, Graduates, Colleagues, Honoured Guests,

Marie O’Connor was born and raised in Clonskeagh, a stone’s throw from the UCD campus at Belfield.  Marie thrived at School and, too young for university entry after her Leaving Cert, she undertook a secretarial course in the then Rathmines College. Although a potential path into engineering had been discussed with her very supportive parents, Marie saw the opportunities available to Rathmines College students preparing for careers in business as being exactly what she wanted.

Entering that Commerce programme in Rathmines College as the first woman student was an initial glass ceiling for Marie to smash, with those sceptical of a woman studying business only converted when she gained top marks in classes and completed the programme with the class Gold Medal.  A career with the then accounting firm Craig Gardner beckoned with lots more hard work studying for accounting exams and, as if that was not enough, studying for the Bar exams at UCD, as was then the practice, prior to her call to the bar at Kings’ Inns.
 Notwithstanding this additional professional achievement in Law, Marie persisted with her professional services career with Craig Gardner, and remained with the firm when it was taken over and rebranded as Price Waterhouse Cooper (now PWC). At PWC Marie demonstrated once again a combination of exceptional drive and commitment, with creativity around opportunities and outstanding empathy and people skills. These exceptional aptitudes have underpinned not only a remarkable career at PWC but also extensive leadership contributions to gender equality and to higher education.

Marie carved out a role at PWC in supporting the emergent and growing investment of US firms in Ireland and travelled extensively to engage with clients and to find new leads across the US. Marie was a pioneer amongst those in government and professional services firms, building those relationships and processes which underpinned Ireland’s modernisation and remarkable economic growth. Today, we honour Marie as an outstanding leader of this transformation of the Irish economy and of Irish society. Marie was recognised within the firm for her skills and achievements and, smashing another glass ceiling, was appointed the first female partner of PWC in Ireland. Even in the US, as a female PWC partner, Marie was a rarity. 
Beyond being the one who other aspiring women professionals could see, Marie was a role model for those with young families.  Her four children all now grown and here with us today, and are very welcome.

Marie has been a leader in seeking to promote opportunities for women to achieve professional success and to remove barriers to gender equality in Ireland across business, government and NGO sectors. Notably she led on establishing the Irish Chapter of the 30% Club, a global campaign to increase the proportion of women in senior leadership positions. For this she deployed her extensive contact lists to draw in the chief executives of Ireland’s major companies to support the initiative, and then mentored the next generation of gender equality leaders.

Retirement from PWC brought new opportunities and challenges. In 2017 the higher education minister, Mary Mitchell O’Connor, appointed Marie to chair a Gender Equality Task Force. This group, building on the work of the HEA Review of Gender Equality in Irish Higher Education, was forensic in addressing inequality in higher education and identifying where further opportunities lay. A key example of this data driven approach was to highlight the importance of understanding the barriers to women achieving full professor grade by reference both to advertised external competitions and internal promotions schemes. Significantly the report highlighted also the under-representation of women in senior professional roles in the sector. At that time, no Irish university had ever had a female President – after more than 400 years. A number of significant steps were adopted in the sector on the recommendations of the task force that have been and will continue to be transformative.

Distinct, but related, University College Dublin had the great good fortune to have Marie O’Connor as chair of its sixth Governing Authority in February 2019 – smashing another glass ceiling as the first woman to hold this critical role. Marie was an outstanding GA chair during a very challenging period for the University with major external shocks affecting both operations and financial sustainability with the pandemic crisis in the Spring of 2020 and then the Ukraine war.  In the role of chair Marie led on further developing both transparency and equality in university governance. She chaired the first gender-balanced UCD Governing Authority and, during her term, both of the other major decision-making bodies of the University, the University Management Team and the Academic Council were gender balanced for the first time. Under Marie’s leadership the GA, as an aspect of its central function in overseeing and approving strategy and budget, took a strong interest in quality assurance, sustainability and EDI, setting the tone and priorities from the top. Overseeing the operation of measures she had recommended as Chair of the Gender Equality Task Force, Marie’s period as Chair saw the proportion of women in full professor roles increase from 40 (24%) to 54 (29%) and on to 63 (33%) this year. Marie chaired the panel that appointed Professor Orla Feely as UCD’s first female president, arguably completing the circle of cultural and institutional transformations which she first modelled when starting out as a business student in Rathmines and then led on in industry, government and academia.

Marie O’Connor, for your transformative leadership we honour you today.

Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas, 

Praesento vobis hanc meam filium, quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneam esse quae admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in utroque Jure, tam Civili quam Canonico, idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.