Sally O'Connor

Overview

Sally is the Director of Operations for the Social Science Research Park (SPARK) at Cardiff University. SPARK is a £60m investment in creating the world’s first social science research park. She has been involved throughout the SPARK initiative, from the conceptual development through to its implementation in a new bespoke building on the university’s Innovation Campus. The sbarc|spark building, shared with Cardiff Innovations opened in March 2022 and currently houses 16 research groups and  over 40 external partners from the public, private and third sectors. 

Sally  provides leadership, operational oversight and pro-actively encourages new research and innovation activity across SPARK. Central to her role is to deliver the synergies at the heart of SPARK: co-creation and collaboration – people working together across academic disciplines with practitioners across private, pubic and third sectors to address some of society’s most pressing problems. 

Prior to this Sally has worked in a variety of roles in the University including as Research Development Manager for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences supporting  large scale multi-and interdisciplinary projects, Whilst working in the Business School she researched the growth potential of SMEs and ran leadership development programmes for SMEs that included coaching owners of the businesses. Before entering the HE sector, Sally spent time in the private sector including in a management consultancy firm and a multinational semiconductor firm in Germany.