Garlin Gilchrist

Garlin Gilchrist II (born September 25, 1982) is an American politician and activist serving as the 64th lieutenant governor of Michigan since 2019.

He is a member of the Democratic Party.

Gilchrist was born in Detroit.

In 1982, his family moved to Farmington, Michigan.

His mother worked at General Motors for 32 years and his father worked in defense contract management for the United States Department of Defense.

Gilchrist earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with majors in computer science and computer engineering from the University of Michigan in 2005.

Gilchrist moved to Redmond, Washington, and worked for Microsoft for four years as a software engineer, where he helped build SharePoint.

Next, Gilchrist worked as a community organizer and director of new media for the Center for Community Change, now known as Community Change.

Later, Gilchrist worked for MoveOn.org in Washington, D.C., as national campaign director.

In July 2014, Gilchrist moved back to Detroit, working for the city government under chief information officer Beth Niblock as director of innovation and emerging technology.

He created the Improve Detroit smartphone app that allows residents to report issues for the city to address.

He served as founding executive director of the Center for Social Media Responsibility within the University of Michigan School of Information from the University of Michigan Detroit Center.

In 2017, Gilchrist ran for Detroit City Clerk against incumbent Janice Winfrey.

He lost by 1,482 votes.

Gretchen Whitmer selected Gilchrist as her running mate in the 2018 Michigan gubernatorial election.

The pair defeated the Republican ticket of Bill Schuette and Lisa Posthumus Lyons.

Gilchrist was selected as a Community Change Champion in Community Organizing in 2019 for his work to advance social and racial justice in the United States.

With Whitmer's victory, Gilchrist became the first African American to serve as the lieutenant governor of Michigan, as well as the first born in the 1980's. He took office on January 1, 2019.

Gilchrist served as cochair of the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, a bipartisan working group of officeholders, law enforcement officials, and stakeholders assembled by Governor Whitmer in 2019 to examine the growing jail populations which had tripled in 30 years despite historically low crime rates.

The group held over a dozen meetings with the public and stakeholders across Michigan in “one of the state's largest bipartisan collaborations on criminal justice reform to date.” The task force issued a final report with 18 recommendations, many of which were included a large package of dozens of bipartisan criminal justice reform bills passed and signed in to law by Governor Whitmer in January 2021.

The “historic” bipartisan package was dubbed “a model for state-level policy change affecting local jail populations” by Pew Charitable Trusts.

Republican leaders of both legislative chambers praised the bipartisan package as an example of "putting people before politics" and "thoughtful and purposeful" policies built on " the consensus and compromise of a diverse group of stakeholders."

The legislation was aimed at protecting public safety while helping thousands avoid arrest and incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenses.

The bipartisan package included bills to:

Gilchrist and his wife have three children.

Gilchrist was named a vice-chair of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

On November 8, 2022, Whitmer and Gilchrist were re-elected by a wide margin in 2022 Michigan gubernatorial election, defeating the Republican ticket of Tudor Dixon and Shane Hernandez.

On April 9, 2020, Whitmer named Gilchrist as the chair of a statewide taskforce examining racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gilchrist later claimed victory in reducing the racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths.

According to a March 2021 study from the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the Michigan Coronavirus Racial Disparities Task Force “paved the way” for tacking racial inequities and reduced of COVID-19 cases and mortality among Black residents.

According to the study, the task force helped reduce the average number of cases for Black residents “dropped from 176 per million population per day in March 2020 to 59 per million population per day in October 2020.”