Who We Are
Nigel O’Connor
Company Director Nigel O’Connor is looking forward for you to join him on tour in his home country of Ireland. A native of Dublin City, the capital of Ireland, Nigel now lives in Williamston, Michigan with his wife, Jessica.
Nigel began his foray into tourism as a young man in the 1990s, working in Malahide Castle in north County Dublin. In 1998, Nigel trained as a bus driver on the city buses in Dublin, before moving onto the long distance coaches, establishing himself on varied private hire work, which included overnight trips across Ireland, the UK and France. The highlight of this work, he says, were the annual eleven day pilgrimages from Ireland to Lourdes in France with the Irish Navy in the early 2000s.
The next logical step was to train as a certified national tour guide. In 2016, Nigel completed the training necessary to be certified as a tour director with CIE Tours International. In 2017, he undertook training to become an accredited National Tour Guide in Ireland. Since then, Nigel has directed, driven and guided over fifty tours of Ireland and Scotland, ranging from five to fourteen days in duration.
In 2017, Nigel met his wife Jessica Kiesling on tour in Ireland. They were engaged in 2019, and married in Williamston, Michigan in February 2020. In 2022, they started their first joint venture, Irish Oak Tours, to provide guided tours of Ireland. They undertook three highly successful tours in their first year, which spurred them on to put together this ambitious and exciting itinerary for summer 2023.
Nigel and Jessica hope you will join them in 2023 to tour Ireland, and create life long memories of the wonderful Emerald Isle!
Jessica O’Connor
Jessica thinks in song lyrics, so sing it with us: just a small town girl … the Midwest farmers’ daughters really make you feel alright … she’s a good girl, loves her mama, loves Jesus, and Nigel, too. A midwestern native, Jessica has built her career designing educational experiences. As a certified spiritual director, her faith centers all that she does. Combining her experiences with her love for Ireland, she looks forward to designing both “adult study abroad experiences” and pilgrimages for those interested in exploring the mysteries of the faith.
As alluded to earlier, Jessica met Nigel while on pilgrimage in 2017. Travelling to Ireland on the first anniversary of her first husband’s passing, Jessica hoped to encounter Resurrection. She found that - and more. That week-long tour around Ireland with The Catholic Traveler felt like coming back to life again and rediscovering herself. Ireland became the backdrop of hope, life and love. While we can’t guarantee that you’ll find all of that, we invite you to come. You will definitely encounter more than you could ever have imagined.