Aideen McGinley

Aideen was appointed to the National Trust’s Board of Trustees in September 2019. She is a Carnegie UK Trustee and Co-Chair of the Carnegie Roundtable on Measuring Wellbeing in Northern Ireland. A former National Trustee on the BBC Trust.

Aideen has over 30 years’ local and central government experience in Northern Ireland including CEO in local government in Fermanagh and Permanent Secretary in the newly devolved central government in 1999. She established the first Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure and then moved to the Department of Employment and Learning where she was responsible for further and higher education, employment and skills. Reflecting her interest in regeneration she took up a secondment in 2009 as CEO of ILEX, the urban regeneration company for Derry-Londonderry, where she was instrumental in building the £14m symbolic Peace Bridge and successfully securing the inaugural and transformational UK City of Culture 2013 title for the city.

Aideen is Chair of Galway 2020 and a member of the DCMS Advisory Committee for UK City of Culture. Facilitating in the public sector with Central and Local Government on Wellbeing, Community Planning, Coproduction and Stakeholder Engagement, she is also an Associate of the Future Search Network. She holds a number of other voluntary positions in local charities in Northern Ireland including as a Trustee of the Aisling Centre and Vice Chair of the Fermanagh Trust.

Aideen was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Millennium honours list, an honorary doctorate from the University of Ulster and honorary membership of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects. Other awards include an Outstanding Recognition Award from Londonderry Chamber of Commerce in 2013 and the Heart for Habitat for Humanity Award in 2018.