Gigi Scoles

Gigi Scoles joined AEquitas as an Attorney Advisor in January 2025. She came to AEquitas from having served with the Department of Justice’s Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development Assistance and Training (DOJ/OPDAT) as a Resident Legal Advisor (RLA). As an RLA, she managed the anti-human trafficking portfolio in Mexico and prior to that the criminal justice reform program in Mali.

Gigi worked as an Assistant Prosecutor in Essex County, New Jersey from 2005 to 2013. In 2010, she was detailed to OPDAT as the Intermittent Legal Advisor to Djibouti on Human Trafficking. Upon her return to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, she was assigned to be the Human Trafficking Liaison for the office and worked with the State Attorney General’s office to write a human trafficking training curriculum for prosecutors throughout the State. In 2013, Gigi became the Director for Human Rights at Vital Voices Global Partnership. She worked with international human rights leaders in Cameroon, Uganda, Mexico, Colombia, Thailand, South Africa, India, Nepal, China, and Rwanda to build capacity in their own countries to respond to gender-based violence and human trafficking in a more victim-centered manner. She first worked in partnership with AEquitas in this role, as Vital Voices and AEquitas collaborated on many of those programs.

Gigi obtained her bachelor’s degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1998, and her Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers School of Law in Camden, New Jersey in 2002.  During law school, she externed for Federal Magistrate Joel B. Rosen, U.S.M.J., and served as research assistant to Prof. Sally Goldfarb, where her research primarily focused on Family Law.  After law school, she served as a law clerk to esteemed Superior Court Judge F. Lee Forrester, J.S.C. (now deceased), who was widely viewed as the long-time leading authority on juvenile justice in the State of New Jersey.  She earned an LL.M. Adv. in Public International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 2004 and interned at the Permanent Court for Arbitration in the Hague. She speaks fluent French, Italian, English, and Spanish, and conversational Dutch.