Game On: From GE Aerospace to the Ben-Gals, Gillian Wanosky Keeps Her Eye on the Ball

When the Cincinnati Bengals play their first game of the season at Paycor Stadium this weekend, Gillian Wanosky will be right there with them. Not perched at the edge of her living room sofa, not cheering from the stands, but with them. On the field. Just off the 10-yard line.

“It’s pretty surreal to share the field with some of the most iconic players in the NFL,” she says. 

Wanosky, a communications specialist at GE Aerospace and a dancer with almost 20 years of experience, is among the newest members of the Ben-Gals, the NFL professional cheerleading team that performs at every Bengals home game. While quarterback Joe Burrow, wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, and the rest of the team face off against their opponents, Wanosky and the Ben-Gals showcase their own athleticism and skill through dance routines to motivate and entertain the crowd. Though she’s surrounded by 65,000 spectators — and cameras broadcasting the game to millions of NFL fans — she tries to think about game day as no different than a regular practice. 

“It’s a huge adrenaline rush, but I try to stay grounded and just focus on the job at hand,” she says. “If I let the magnitude of it sink in, I would probably get nervous. But before every performance, I tell myself, ‘I’ve done harder things before, and I can do hard things now.’”

Touchdown, GE Aerospace 

For many people, juggling a busy full-time job with the rigorous dance rehearsals and workouts of an NFL cheerleader — not to mention the Ben-Gals performances at football games and charity events — would qualify as a “hard thing.” The Ben-Gals practice for three hours, two to three evenings a week. But for Wanosky, who manages the global corporate communications calendar and monitors media coverage of GE Aerospace around the world, a fast-paced life is business as usual.

“It’s very manageable, given what I’m used to,” says the West Virginia native, pointing out that she took her first dance class at age seven. “From then to the time I graduated high school, I was in the studio four days a week, and in high school I also joined the drill team. I learned time management skills at a very early age.”

The intense schedule — a combination of academics and training in all dance styles — continued in college at West Virginia University, where Wanosky graduated with honors. She earned bachelor’s degrees in both journalism and dance, all while performing on the WVU Dance Team, cheering on game days, and competing at the National Dance Association’s Collegiate Dance Championship, where she helped lead the team to two first-place wins in 2021. “I always knew I wanted to take a professional career route in media and communications, but I also wanted to hold on to dance for as long as I could,” she says. 

Wanosky completed her master’s degree in integrated marketing communications at WVU in 2023, then moved with her husband to New York City. There she took a marketing job in the energy industry and resumed artistic training in one of the largest hubs for dance in the country. But she found herself longing for the camaraderie she’d felt when dancing in college.

“In New York, I took classes with some of the most amazing people, but I had an epiphany,” she says. “I missed the feeling of being on a team.” Not sure where it would lead her, she began taking “pro-style” classes, courses designed to help experienced dancers perfect performance skills and styles, like hip-hop, that they’d need to succeed on an NFL dance team. 

In June 2024, she began a mostly remote job at GE Aerospace, where she had interned in global marketing and communications as a graduate student two years earlier. Suddenly, both her career and artistic goals fell into place. As she and her husband began planning a move to Cincinnati, she explains, “I locked into the idea of trying out for the Ben-Gals.”

Squad Vibes

Only a few people at GE Aerospace knew about Wanosky’s two-month Ben-Gals audition process, which began in March. But word quickly got around once she made the squad. To celebrate, the Corporate Affairs team surprised her by opening their weekly team meeting with Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” the unofficial Bengals theme song. 

Her colleagues were cheering her at the first preseason home game, in August, too. “It was so exciting to have them there,” she says. “They were my first friends in Cincinnati. It’s so nice to be working with such a supportive group.” 

While her Ben-Gals experiences are helping her discover more about the city she now calls home, her colleagues have been helpful and welcoming in the office. And the position itself is teaching her much more about GE Aerospace and future career possibilities.

“I have visibility into almost everything, because I manage the communications calendar, and I’m learning so much about what everybody at the company does,” she says. “I call my job ‘GE Aerospace University.’ I’m learning so much so fast, and I have such great coaches.”

Despite playing in a very competitive American Football Conference, the Bengals stand as good a chance as anyone of returning to the Super Bowl this year. Wanosky, for one, is feeling positive. “There’s been a lot of talk about some of the players we have, and everybody’s really excited,” she says. Whatever the team’s fate, she and the rest of the Ben-Gals plan to make a lot of noise.