Chris Gates is the Executive Director of PACE, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement. PACE is a learning collaborative of foundations that works within the field of philanthropy to bring more attention and focus to the issues of civic engagement and to encourage more members of the philanthropic community to make civic engagement a part of their funding priorities. In this role Gates speaks and teaches extensively around the country and around the world on the broad topics of civic engagement, including civic education, leadership training, community problem solving, political reform and democratic renewal. He previously served for eleven years as President of the National Civic League, America's oldest good government organization.

Gates is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He has previously served on the boards of the Council for the Advancement of Citizenship and INDEPENDENT SECTOR. He has also served as co-chair of the board of the Civic Practices Network and co-chair of the Saguaro Seminar, a research project based at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government working to find ways to build social capital in America.

Gates received an honors degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, where he studied the interaction between the public and private sectors. He also studied political economics at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.