Garlin Gilchrist II: From Engineer To Making History

     Born in Detroit but raised in Farmington since he was a baby, Garlin Gilchrist II was the son of a DoD contractor and a lifelong General Motors employee, essentially a typical Michigan story. In 2005, he got his bachelor's degrees in computer science and engineering from the University of Michigan. 

     He moved to Redmond, Washington, where he helped develop SharePoint for Microsoft over a span of four years. Between 2010 and 2014, Gilchrist worked for MoveOn.org and Community Change, crafting new community campaigns and directing social media efforts. After this, he returned to Detroit, where he created the Improve Detroit smartphone app, which allows residents to report problems that need solving to the city government. He was far from done, founding the Center for Social Media Responsibility at his alma mater and mounting a campaign for city clerk of Detroit, which he narrowly lost.

     For his decade of work for social justice, Gilchrist was selected a Community Change Champion of Change in Community Organizing in 2019. He also had bright political prospects, and, that same year, he took office as the first black lieutenant governor of Michigan and highest-ranking black Michigander in state political history. In November 2019, while Governor Gretchen Whitmer was in Israel, Gilchrist became the highest-ranking black official to sign a bill into law in Michigan in his capacity as acting governor.

     His role has been more than just symbolic. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Garlin Gilchrist II chaired a task force whose mission was to examine racial disparities in the virus' impact. He chairs a separate task force that examines juvenile justice and pretrial incarceration. In 2020, he was a vice chair of the Democratic National Convention. This is aside from his role as a husband to Ellen and a father to Ruby, Emily, and Garlin III. 

     Garlin Gilchrist II has made history with his innovative and science-based approaches to problems, especially those disproportionately impacting minority communities, and his future looks pretty bright.