Mairead Maguire

Mairead Maguire
Mairead Maguire, July 2009
Born	Mairead Corrigan (1944-01-27) 27 January 1944 (age 73) Belfast, Northern Ireland
Other names	Mairead Corrigan Maguire
Alma mater	Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin
Organization	The Peace People, The Nobel Women's Initiative
Known for	International social activist
Spouse(s)	Jackie Maguire (m. 1981)
Children	2 (5)
Relatives	Anne Maguire (sister)
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize (1976) Norwegian People's Peace Prize (1976) Carl von Ossietzky Medal (1976) Pacem in Terris (1990)

Mairead Maguire (born 27 January 1944), also known as Mairead Corrigan Maguire and formerly as Mairéad Corrigan, is a peace activist from Northern Ireland. She co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Women for Peace, which later became the Community for Peace People, an organisation dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire and Williams were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize. Maguire has also won several other awards.

In recent years, she has criticised the Israeli government's policy towards Gaza, in particular to the naval blockade. In June 2010, Maguire went on board the MV Rachel Corrie as part of a flotilla that unsuccessfully attempted to breach the blockade.

Maguire was born into a Roman Catholic community in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the second of eight children – five sisters and two brothers. Her parents were Andrew and Margaret Corrigan. She attended St. Vincent's Primary School, a private Catholic school, until the age of 14, at which time her family could no longer pay for her schooling. After working for a time as a babysitter at a Catholic community center, she was able to save enough money to enroll in a year of business classes at Miss Gordon's Commercial College, which led her at the age of 16 to a job as an accounting clerk with a local factory. She volunteered regularly with the Legion of Mary, spending her evenings and weekends working with children and visiting inmates at Long Kesh prison. When she was 21 she began working as a secretary for the Guinness brewery, where she remained employed until December 1976.

Maguire told The Progressive in 2013 that her early Catholic heroes included Dorothy Day and the Berrigan brothers.