Mariel O’ Connell

Mariel O’Connell is an Associate Consultant with Management Consultants for the Arts and the Executive Director of Catapult Opera, where she guides the company’s strategy, operations, and financial planning. She has devoted her career to opera and to the artists who bring it to life, and she brings both a strategic mind and a deep understanding of how arts organizations work from the inside. Her strengths lie in project and operations management, revenue strategy and financial modeling, and audience and market research.

Before Catapult, Mariel spent four years at The Juilliard School as Assistant Director of Opera Activities, Vocal Arts. She oversaw the planning, budgeting, and production of four full-scale operas each season and brought together the many departments that make that work possible. She especially valued the chance to collaborate with artists such as Stephen Wadsworth, Marcus Shields, Patrick Furrer, Joseph Colaneri, Kevin Newbury, and Mary Birnbaum, and to help young singers make the leap from training to the professional stage, including through a new opera curriculum she created.

Her experience spans both the business and creative sides of the field. At Boston Lyric Opera, she led marketing, sales, and box office teams as the company found its footing after the pandemic, developing new pricing, forecasting, and audience strategies that remain in place today. Earlier, as Associate Producer at Beth Morrison Projects, she produced world premieres, tours, and the PROTOTYPE Festival, including two Pulitzer Prize-winning operas. That work took her to LA Opera, San Francisco Opera, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, and Austin Opera, and brought her alongside artists including Missy Mazzoli, Ellen Reid, David T. Little, Daniel Fish, Michael Gordon, Paola Prestini, Nico Muhly, Anthony Roth Costanzo, James Darrah, and Kamala Sankaram. She also built BMP: Next Generation, a commissioning initiative for emerging composers that continues today. She began her career as Executive Assistant to soprano Renée Fleming.

Mariel holds an MBA from NYU Stern, where she consulted for the NYU Production Lab on a go-to-market strategy for a music licensing venture, for Theatre Development Fund on member research and pricing, and for the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative on board recruitment and governance. She studied English, Art History, and History at Barnard College. A firm believer in learning from others in the field, she completed OPERA America’s Mentorship Program for Women Administrators in 2025-2026 under Melissa Wegner and participated in its Leadership Intensive in 2019. She also serves on the boards of the National Opera Center and the Zenith Opera Competition.