Pen pics of the Chair and seven new members to the Northern Ireland Skills Council (NISC).
Chair
Kathleen O’Hare
Kathleen O’Hare is from Newry. She has extensive involvement in education and skills. From 2002 - 2018 she was Headteacher of two large post primary schools - St Cecilia’s in Londonderry and Hazelwood Integrated College in North Belfast. During this time, she was recognised for her services and awarded, UK Headteacher of the Year, Blackboard Headteacher of the Year, Freeman of the City of London and made a Fellow of the International Peace School in Messines. She has a BA in History and an MA in History and Politics, as well as a Professional Qualification in Headship (PQH).
Kathleen is the current Vice-Chair of Council for Curriculum, Examination and Assessment CCEA (unremunerated post). She also contributed to the Northern Ireland Curriculum by providing resources and teacher training for the Common Curriculum. Mrs O’Hare is a former member of Senate at QUB and currently serves on the Board of Belfast Metropolitan College where she is Vice-Chair and chairs the Curriculum, Quality and Engagement Committee (remuneration £250 for a Governing Body meeting and £150 for a committee meeting or event sanctioned by the Chair).
Since her retirement as a college principal, she has continued her services to education by working on international leadership and action research projects in Taiwan, Brazil, Middle East, and North Africa Region for the British Council. She is a recent member of the Department of Education Expert Panel on educational underachievement, Fair Start and is also a panel member of the Teachers Regulation Agency in England and Wales.
Mrs O’Hare is a Voluntary Director of the Integrated Education Fund (IEF) and serves on the Board of Governors of Newbridge Integrated College. She is also Vice-Chair of Newry Cathedral Parish Pastoral Council and a Director of the Parish Conference Centre.
Members
Deborah O’Hare
Deborah has been Principal of The Wallace High School in Lisburn since 2009. Previously she was Principal of Portadown College and has held a range of leadership positions in Antrim Grammar School, Methodist College and Banbridge Academy. She has a degree in French (BA Hons) a Post Graduate Certificate in Education, a master’s degree in educational management (MEd) and a Professional Qualification in Headship (PQHNI).
She has expertise in matching the curriculum to meet the needs of both the individual and the economy, leadership development, change management, business planning and digital learning. In Wallace she has led the school through a large scale one-to-one digital device roll out, with the associated training and educational programmes placing Wallace at the forefront of digital learning and technology innovation in the UK.
Deborah is a former president of the Association of Schools and College Leaders, Northern Ireland; a former member of the Education Committee of the Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA), and is a regular contributor to a range of education, mental health, financial policy and skill development debates and consultations. She holds two other NI public appointments currently. She is a member of the South Eastern Regional College Governing Body (SERC) for which she receives £250 per governing body meeting and £150 per committee meeting. In this role she is a member of the Audit and Risk Committee and is Chair of the Education Committee. Deborah is also a member of College Advisory Group of the College of Agriculture Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) for which she receives £237 per day and £119 per half day.
Ann Morgan
Ann is an experienced senior business person with an excellent track record of delivering results within a very results-orientated and progressive private sector environment. She has significant experience in managing change and crisis situations; senior management mentoring and development; sales and margin enhancement; cost control; and succession planning.
Up until the end of 2021 Ann worked for Murdock Builders Merchants Group for 22 years, joining the Group in 2000 as Group HR Manager and progressing through HR Director and Sales & Operations Director roles, before being appointed as Chief Executive in 2009 and remaining in that role until her retirement from the Group in 2021.
Since leaving full-time employment Ann has been working on a self-employed basis with private clients, supporting them in the areas of People Retention, Management & Development. She also provides Business Coaching for mid-level and senior management.
On a voluntary basis she is an active member of the NI Productivity Forum and chaired their Management Working Group. She also mentors young HR professionals through the CIPD Mentorship Scheme.
Mark Langhammer
Mark leads the National Education Union (Europe’s largest education union) in Northern Ireland. Mark’s early working career as a youth worker and welfare rights advisor led to a long career in community education before leading the University for Industry’s learndirect initiative.
He served as Chair of the Northern Ireland Citizens Advice Bureaux and as an Independent Labour councillor throughout the 1990s until 2005, chairing Newtownabbey’s Economic Development Committee for much of that time. He also served on the National Executive of the Irish Labour Party, 2005-08. He was an early graduate of the TUC and Harvard University’s ‘Leading Change’ programme (2008) and has been elected on three occasions to the NI Committee of the ICTU. Mark is Vice-Chair of Crusaders FC, a leading Northern Irish professional football club, as well as Vice-Chair of Monkstown Amateur Boxing Club. Both clubs run important ‘education through sport’ development programmes.
Mark has published two books: “Designer Disaster” on the design defects of the post-war housing estate (1992), and “We’re Red, We’re Black” – a ‘Behind the Scenes’ account of the journey of a professional football club from near bankruptcy to qualification for the European Champions League (2017). He has written in a wide variety of local and UK publications on education, industrial relations, trade unionism and politics.
Mary Meehan
Mary is Deputy Chief Executive at Manufacturing NI working closely with manufacturers to advise and support in the area of skills, diversity and people development. She has over twenty years leadership experience with a diverse skillset including setting business strategy, leading on diversity, international trade, cluster development and innovation support.
Mary is passionate about female leadership and championing diversity and has recently joined Sisters IN Leadership Programme which has been developed specifically to help sixth form girls build their confidence and broaden their career perspectives with 1-1 mentoring and job shadowing opportunities.
An NI STEM Ambassador, she is also very committed to promoting STEM through working with university research teams on commercialising innovation projects and participating in outreach programmes to schools with The Royal Academy of Engineering. Through this work she has worked hard to promote positive stereotypes of STEM female role models through helping to set up the first Women in Science and Engineering Hub in Northern Ireland.
Mary holds a master’s in business administration (MBA) and a BA Hons in International Business Communication from Ulster University.
Annie Millar
Annie is founder and director of Infinity Professional Training & Development. She has over 30 years’ experience of working within Education, Training and Business environments.
Professional specialist areas of expertise include training and assessment of Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) programmes, the Apprenticeship NI initiative eg., Built Environment Construction, Advanced Engineering, Aerospace, Manufacturing, Business,Agri-foods, BT, NI Water, Uniformed/Emergency organisations,renewables, Continuous Improvement (Lean Manufacturing), Health and Safety, Human Factors for Emergency Services, Coaching and Mentoring and Career Guidance and Development.
She has a PGDip in Career Guidance and Counselling (QCG), BAHons in Business, Certificate in Teaching with Commendation (FE/HE), NEBOSH, Accredited Internal Quality Assurer, Diploma in Business Improvement Techniques as well as being a Member of the Institute of Safety and Health (Tech/IOSH) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). She has championed the provision of accredited, bespoke training and assessment solutions and services to a substantial number of SMEs, multi-internationals, and uniformed emergency organisations within Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, ROI and British Territories.
Caroline Van Der Feltz
Caroline is an experienced HR Director with over 25 years’ experience within the fields of Financial Services, FMCG, Travel and Retail sectors. Currently she is HR Director for Danske Bank UK where she leads the People Strategy as part of the Bank’s Executive Committee. She has spent the majority of her career in London and returned to NI in 2015.
Prior to taking up her current role she worked for a number of FTSE 100 companies including Reckitt Benckiser where she held a Global HR Director role, Executive HR Director at Coutts and had 11 years with RBS in a variety of HR roles.
Caroline is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and Chairs the CBI Northern Ireland People and Skills Committee. She currently sits on the board of the Financial Services Skills and is a qualified Executive Coach (AOEC).
Dr Frances Weldon
Frances has over 25 years’ experience working in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry. As STEM Outreach Manager at Almac Group, she leads the development and delivery of activities across primary, post-primary and third level education sectors to raise awareness about careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and provides support to young people regarding their subject choices and potential career paths. She has led initiatives such as Almac’s Pathway® programme at W5 and Almac’s Virtual Work Experience Hub to inform and inspire post-primary pupils about careers in the pharmaceutical industry.
Frances graduated from Dublin City University with a 1st Class B.Sc. (Hons) in Analytical Science and then obtained her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from Dublin City University. In addition to 15 years’ experience as a scientist, she also held teaching and research support roles in Dublin City University and Queen’s University Belfast.