Gabrielle O Donovan

Non-fiction Writer
The Change Press
Memoirist, Non-fiction writer
Available for:
Library visits, Live readings and performances, Public speaking, Workshops
Contact me via the SoA

Gabrielle O’Donovan is a multiple award-winning author, memoirist, and organisational culture and change expert.

Over a 20-year career, Gabrielle has clocked up more than 30,000 hours leading culture and change adoption for global transformational projects for major brands, including Shell Energy, Unilever, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and the UK Ministry of Justice. Her deep industry expertise directly shapes her acclaimed business publications, including “The Corporate Culture Handbook” (The Liffey Press) which was rated in the top 1% of business books by Business Book Review USA , “Solvency II: Stakeholder Communications and Change” (Gower), and “Making Organizational Change Stick” (Routledge). Gabrielle’s pioneering culture transformation work has won multiple industry awards—including an ASTD Excellence in Practice Award—and was featured by MIT Professor Edgar Schein in his seminal text, Organizational Culture and Leadership.

Alongside her corporate and academic career—which includes serving as an Associate Professor in Austria and Hong Kong—Gabrielle debuted as a memoirist with her critically acclaimed book, “Gino’s Contraband: Guilty Until Proven Innocent” (The Change Press, 2025), which details her harrowing experience as a victim of mistaken identity and state overreach by the UK tax authority (HMRC). Rather than remaining just a personal chronicle of institutional failure, Gabrielle uniquely leverages her background as a culture and change professional to turn bureaucratic horror into resolute advocacy—concluding her award-winning account with a practical, structural blueprint for institutional reform at HMRC and a call for a UK Taxpayer Bill of Rights: 

  • 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Honoured as an official Finalist and Silver Medalist (True Crime category)
  • 2026 Publishers Weekly “BookLife Elite” Curated Collection and distributed to international academic and public libraries across 115 countries.
  • 2025 BookLife Prize: Runner-Up with an overall judge evaluation score of 9/10.
  • 2025 BookLife Accolade: Earned the official “Editors’ Pick” designation.
  • 2025 Literary Titan Award: Recipient of the Gold Award for outstanding biographical storytelling.
  • 2025 Love Reading Accolade: Designated as an official “Indie Books We Love” selection.