Tag Archives: Miss Ireland

Miss Ireland, Fionnghuala O’Reilly, on Sports and Working for NASA



In honor of me working the Miss Universe Pageant in Atlanta this week, a special “Tech of Sports” this week.

It’s the perfect combination of sports and tech with Miss Ireland, Fionnghuala O’Reilly. Call her “Fig”. Fig is a Datanaut with NASA and a former Junior Olympic Athlete.

She has been my favorite contestant to deal with at Miss Universe this week. She is a member of NASA’s Datanaut program within the space agency’s Open Innovation program, and also works remotely out of Dublin as the executive director of the NASA Space Apps Challenge, which hosts an international hackathon each year. She’s involved with “Girls Who Code” and volunteers her time to many charitable efforts.

This year, she’s dedicated her pageant platform to making sure young girls know what options are available to them — something she pushes with her #ReachForTheStars social media campaign.

As part of her efforts, O’Reilly has even teamed up with Girls Who Code to bring a group of young girls on a pair of trips to NASA to check out the Mars InSight Lander launch and landing.

She’s also a decorated athlete, and a top sports performer in her home country.

You’ll find out about all of that and more this week, as Fionnghuala O’Reilly, Miss Ireland, is the first pageant contestant on Tech of Sports.

Good luck to Fig this week at Miss Universe and see her big feature in People Magazine this week!