About Harold Gates
Mr. Gates is co-founder and owner of the Midwest Center for Cultural Competence, LLC, an organization established in 2003 to offer consultation, training and education to corporations, non-profits, health care providers and educational institutions. Among the Center’s former clients are Journey Mental Health Center of Dane County, Community Shares of Wisconsin, the VA Hospital-Madison, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, Abri Health Plan of Milwaukee, Disability Rights Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and most recently, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Since 1989, Mr. Gates has served as a cultural diversity consultant, helping to develop programs for internal policies and improvement of delivery of services, including for the City of Baltimore, Antioch University in Ohio, Journey Mental Health Center of Dane County, the University of Iowa School of Social Work, the National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice, Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. He is also in demand nationally as a presenter at conferences and workshops on family and cultural topics. Recent talks have been for the National Association of Social Workers, the Wisconsin State Prevention Conference, and the Wisconsin Association of Family and Children’s Agencies. He has also been a guest speaker at Georgetown University, Madison College, and Edgewood College, among other educational institutions.
Mr. Gates is former Associate Director of Cultural Competence for the Wisconsin Initiative to Promote Healthy Lifestyles (WIPHL), a statewide project funded by SAMHSA, the Department of Health Services and UW School of Medicine. He has served as Vice President of the Association of Multiethnic Americans, a Los Angelesbased national umbrella advocacy group for interracial and transracially adoptive families (his own family is blended racially). He is currently a Member-at-Large for the Council for Standards in Human Service Education (CSHSE) which accredits Human Services programs nationally. He has served on the Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations. In addition, he is co-founder of three community-based groups: Dane County Multiracial Alliance, The Multiracial Alliance of Wisconsin and The Interracial Families Network.
A faculty member in the Human Services Program at Madison College for more than 25 years, Mr. Gates earned the MATC Foundation Distinguished Teacher Award for excellence in the classroom. He has worked as a school social worker in St. Louis and Madison, and as a university counselor working primarily with students of color at St. Louis University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds an MSSW in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA in Chinese Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as an undergraduate degree in Asian Studies from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
