Gearóid Ó hEára (English: Gerard O'Hara) (born 1953 in Creggan, Derry, Northern Ireland) is a Sinn Féin politician and a former Mayor of Derry, Educated by the Irish Christian Brothers, Ó hEára joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army following the sectarian conflagrations of the late 1960s and 1970s. Almost ten years prior to the IRA ceasefire of 1997, Ó hEára obtained a visa to travel to the United States where he attended a pre-reconciliation ceremony at the Jesuit-run Fordham University, in The Bronx, New York, which was attended by both Unionist and Nationalist politicians.