Dr. Chris Gilmer is a first-generation college student who grew up a product of multi-generational poverty in rural Mississippi to twice become a college president. He now serves as Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Social Justice and as a tenured Professor of English at Tougaloo College. Previously, he was President of West Virginia University Potomac State College and President of West Virginia University at Parkersburg. He proudly served as one of still few openly LGBTQ+ college presidents in the United States and is a champion for access to and equity in higher education for all people.

Prior to his service in West Virginia and with the exception of his tenure as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Adams State University, Colorado's oldest federally-designated Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), he has been a lifetime Mississippian proudly serving most of his career at three Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)—Tougaloo College where he served as a faculty member and as Chair of the Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages, Jackson State University where he served as a faculty member and grant writer, and Alcorn State University where he directed Alcorn's Vicksburg, Mississippi, campus and also directed online education for the Alcorn system.

Dr. Gilmer was the co-founder and co-convener of the U.S. Department of Education's Research Alliance on Promoting Post-Secondary Success at HBCUs, led by the Regional Educational Lab Southeast at Florida State University. He is a published author focusing primarily on topics related to higher education and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), as well as creative nonfiction published alongside Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors. He has presented three times by invitation at the White House Conference on HBCUs and at dozens of national and regional educational conferences. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Society for College and University Planning and recently completed service on the Board of Directors of the Community Colleges of Appalachia and on the Board of Trustees of Tougaloo College. He has served as a National Advisor on College Readiness for the American Association of Community Colleges. He was selected by Phi Theta Kappa as a Paragon President for his accomplishments as a first-year president at WVU Parkersburg. Early in his career, Dr. Gilmer was the inaugural chair of a nationwide network of technical assistance centers for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services serving all U.S. states and jurisdictions.

Dr. Gilmer is the founder of the National Institutes for Historically-Underserved Students, an ad-hoc national think tank currently including underserved students, broadly defined, and their champions from 26 states and the District of Columbia. He and his spouse, David Creel, reside in Jackson, Mississippi.