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Gisèle Scanlon is an Irish communications professional known for her extensive experience in organisational communication, advocacy, and change management within the NGO and charity sector. With a career spanning over 12 years, Scanlon has played pivotal roles in influential organisations and has been recognised for her contributions in campaigns, journalism, and digital media. She has authored two bestselling books and has won an Irish Book Award.

Early and personal life
Gisèle Scanlon was born on November 7, 1976 in Lisselton, Ballydonoghue, Listowel, Co. Kerry, and grew up there, the eldest of three children. Her parents, Marie (née Kelliher) is a teacher and her father Michael Scanlon is a farmer. She became known internationally for her bestselling books which recount her travels and her humble childhood in Kerry and has won an Irish Book Award

University Politics
A three-time master’s student at Trinity College, her most recent campaigning championed causes such as the closure of the Science Gallery and lobbying on behalf of environmental causes, namely co-managing the protection of a red-listed bird breed in Trinity College Dublin during the pandemic.

In October 2021 she co-led postgraduate and mature Trinity students in a protest to Dáil Éireann criticising the provisions in the government's budget as lacking consideration for mature, postgraduate and PhD students, and also highlighed the lack of mental health resources at the College. In the same month, she was the first to voice her concern at a proposal by Trinity College Dublin to build a structure on College Park sports grounds to house an exhibition which would sit on the site for three years. Scanlon launched a petition to save College Park from being built on which was signed by thousands of students and staff. The petition, having garnered around 3,000 signatures and supported by Trinity’s associated sports clubs, spoke of how the proposed exhibition would interfere with access to sports facilities for the mental health of students due to the loss of home games, training grounds and green space and the impacted sustainability factor and destruction of Trinity’s heritage. The campaign was ultimately successful and plans to build on College Park were scrapped by Trinity in February 2022.

In November 2021 she co-wrote an open-letter as a postgraduate seeking urgent intervention to protect the mental and physical health of students scheduled to sit in-person exams during the pandemic. The letter was signed by over 5,000 students and staff from colleges around Ireland and was delivered in December 2021 to the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.

In March 2022, she was amongst those leading on-campus groups who opposed fee increases with success.

In recognition of her service to the student population, Scanlon received the 'Spirit of Trinity’ award in 2018.

Writing Career
Scanlon got a job as an advertising executive in a publishing company shortly thereafter and spent her first year at Smurfit Communications in that department. She got her big break as a writer when EGAN and Peter McKenna at Smurfit moved her to a full scholarship to profile the Irish designer at London Fashion Week for Irish Tatler. She worked in the industry and spent more than a decade working as a freelance culture critic, becoming an art critic for the Irish Independent and a culture writer for the Irish Times. She has features in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Vogue, The Irish Independent, CARA and Condé Nast Traveler and The Guardian. She has travelled and lived in Paris, New York and London. In 2006 her non-fiction book The Goddess Guide was published Scanlon wrote two-books in the non-fiction Goddess series, published in 2006 The Goddess Guide and 2008 The Goddess Experience. The books were published by HarperCollins in the UK and William Morrow in the US and won An Post Irish Book Award and two awards for writing from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) in the UK. She was subsequently made an honorary European Executive member and judge of IADAS.