About eagle's flight
Eagle’s Flight has been in operation in Ireland since 2008, led by Commercial Director, Gerard O’Shea.
As Commercial Director of Eagle’s Flight in Ireland Gerard works with commercial and public clients in tailoring and delivering Eagle’s Flight’s exciting experiential learning programmes to meet their needs. Gerard has presented Eagle’s Flight programmes in Ireland to high profile clients including Apple, EMC, CPL plc and Munster Rugby. He has also assisted in the execution of a large scale delivery to the global leadership of Cereal Partners Worldwide (a joint venture between Nestlé and General Mills) in Evian, France. Gerard believes the success of an intervention is determined mostly by whether or not participants find it relevant to them. His ability to understand the issues at hand enables him to bring this out for clients.
Prior to joining the Eagle’s Flight network, Gerard served as a Senior Auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers auditing both public and private clients in the education, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, electronics, foodstuffs, medical devices, engineering, auctioneering, industrial diamond and construction sectors. The deep understanding of organisational life gained from contact with such a wide variety of organisations enhances his ability to quickly understand the dynamics at play when discussing training interventions with clients. As a Chartered Accountant with an MSc in Work and Organisational Psychology, a rare combination, Gerard finds himself uniquely placed in the training sector.
As part of his MSc in Work and Organisational Psychology, Gerard completed a thesis analysing the Irish Employee Skills, Training and Job Vacancies Survey 2006. The analysis was done in the context of examining Ireland’s response to two important Human Resource Development issues: skills mismatch and the underutilisation of training and development. Interestingly it was the organisations that were not performing skills assessments of their personnel that were reporting few skills shortages. It would appear that organisations that do not assess their skills base don’t know what they are missing. Gerard sees the role of appropriate training and development as critical in succession planning, ensuring an organisation has individuals with the skills and characteristics necessary to secure future success.
Gerard also has extensive experience in corporate outplacement and is still heavily involved with Sanders & Sidney / O’Shea, a joint venture between his family’s business O’Shea Business Consultants and Penna Plc from the UK. They are the largest outplacement organisation in the Republic of Ireland. In developing his expertise in corporate outplacement he served an apprenticeship with Spherion in New York, a member of the Randstad Group and the second largest staffing organisation in the world. There Ger worked closely with candidates facing redundancy, matching their skills and experience with relevant vacant positions and assisting in preparing them for landing another suitable role. Most recently Ger served as on-site Project Manager for the largest outplacement programme in Ireland in 2011 for Talk-Talk plc in Waterford, where a site employing 600 people was closed.
Gerard’s primary degree is a B.A. in Law and Accounting from the University of Limerick, from which he graduated with first class honours. As part of this degree, he completed a tax thesis on the effective transfer of family businesses from parent to child. He also completed an 8 month internship in the legal department of GE Capital Aviation Services.
Gerard is a keen sportsman, developing his love for track and field whilst studying at the University of Limerick, captaining the team in 2004. He specialises in the 200m and 400m distances and has won national varsity titles with the University of Limerick 4x200m (2009) and 4x400m (2004, 2010) relay teams.
