Stacy Davis Gates is President of the Chicago Teachers Union, Executive Vice President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers, and Chair of United Working Families. Before her election to the Office of President in 2022, Davis Gates served four years as Vice President of the Union. Prior to that, she served as the Union’s Political and Legislative Director. In the fall of 2019, she helped lead a 15-day strike and negotiate a historic contract that provides for smaller class sizes, ensures a nurse and social worker in every Chicago public school, secures sanctuary protections for immigrant families, and supports students and families experiencing homelessness. While at the CTU, Davis Gates has been the architect of bold political and legislative campaigns for the schools and city that all Chicagoans deserve. She has raised millions of dollars to elect progressive leaders to city, county, and state government and the U.S. Congress. She played an instrumental role in the 2015 mayoral campaign of Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and the election of classroom teachers to all levels of local government, culminating with the historic election of CTU organizer Brandon Johnson, first as Cook County Commissioner, and in 2023 Mayor of Chicago.
President Davis Gates has spearheaded statewide legislative campaigns that enacted an elected school board for Chicago, bringing democracy to the district for the first time ever. Her legislative efforts also won the strongest charter school accountability measures in the country, restored full bargaining rights that had been denied to Chicago educators for nearly three decades and helped secure millions of dollars in extra state funding for Chicago Public Schools.
In 2017, President Davis Gates helped found United Working Families, an independent political organization by and for working-class people and movements. She also serves as a board member for the Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE), a nexus for organizations working at the intersection of the struggle for racial justice and Wall Street accountability.
President Davis Gates is currently on leave from the classroom where she taught high school social studies for over a decade at Englewood, Clemente and Mason Community Links High Schools. She attended Saint Mary’s College, the University of Notre Dame and Concordia University. Davis Gates lives on the South Side of Chicago with her husband and three children.