Shalom de Gil has lived quite a life.
In fact, in some ways, she feels like she’s lived two.
At the age of 60, Gil-Osle was diagnosed with Autism. That diagnosis changed a lot for her.
“All my life, I was feeling strange, it was because I am on the spectrum,” she said. “My life [has been] like a puzzle, and since [I was diagnosed] I feel so much better. No more panic attacks. I have begun a new life, I am a new woman. I am young again. I have another cycle in my life.”
Just after that, Gil-Osle learned that she had breast cancer, too. While she is in remission now, she said that was another seminal moment in her life that has altered how she sees the world.
“Everything that you have is an opportunity to change your life,” she said.
Gil-Osle is French, and still speaks with a thick accent despite not having lived there in her home nation for many years. She is relatively new to Baltimore, only moving here with her husband about five and a half years ago. Prior to that, they lived in Los Angeles, and prior to LA, they lived around the world. Gil-Osle’s husband was a diplomat for many years.
She works as a business optimization consultant and freelance journalist, contributing to outlets like Forbes France and TIME France under the pen name “Sylvie de Gil.” She primarily covers artificial intelligence and issues relating to it, something she has been interested in and written about for much longer than the subject has been a cultural flashpoint.
While de Gil has spent so much of her life roaming the world, she has found a wonderful community in Baltimore. She lives with her husband right near Patterson Park in Baltimore City, and said she has made more friends in the past five and a half years in Baltimore than she did in nearly 15 in Los Angeles.
Much of that dynamic can be credited to Chabad of Downtown, where de Gil is a member. Her husband is more of a religious Jew, while de Gil says that she is more culturally Jewish.
At Chabad, they find what each of them needs without judgement. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s familiar — in all of the places around the world that the couple lived, there was a Chabad somewhere nearby.
“What I love about the Chabad is [its] freedom [to worship how you choose],” de Gil said. “They are also people that give to other people, and that is very important.”
de Gil’s journey through Judaism is an interesting one. Her mother grew up in Paris during World War II, a city that was under Nazi occupation for four years during the war. Because of that, she wasn’t raised especially religiously.
“My mother was not religious. My grandmother was, but not my mother, because she had seen the war,” de Gil said.
Eventually, de Gil reached a point in her Judaism that falls between those of her mother and grandmother. She’s not exactly praying everyday, but she is proud to be Jewish and attends all sorts of Chabad events.
She said that something that she is particularly passionate about is “the Jewish woman,” and the idea of a woman’s role in Judaism and beyond.
de Gil’s daily perspective as a person, especially her outlook on what she reports on, is what she described as “a mix of tradition and innovation.”
“The future of work, everything innovation, the transatlantic bridge between France and U.S.,” she said, describing what she usually looks to cover.
While many people are reluctant to admit they live in the past and even more proudly espouse that they live in the present, de Gil has a completely different take.
“I live in the future,” she said. “To me, to my clients, to my people, today what you are doing is finished. Tomorrow is going stronger,” she said.
That relates to a quality that de Gil said she is proud to put at the forefront, and one that she credits with helping her fight through cancer: optimism.
“Maybe because of [my] autism I am always very positive,” de Gil said. “Always, I am a Jewish woman, I am strong. I am strong like my mother, my grandmother…you need to be strong. Always be positive.”
