Gloria Woods brings more than 20 years experience working on issues important to women and their families.

Ms. Woods is an investigator with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights in the Flint office. Previously, she served as Program Director at Underground Railroad, Inc, a service center and shelter for domestic and sexual assault survivors and as Executive Director of a Fair Housing Center which served the Saginaw Valley.

Ms. Woods has also been continuously involved in volunteer community and political activism. From 1987 through 2001, she served in various leadership roles in the National Organization for Women, serving as the State President of Michigan-National Organization for Women from 1992-1997 and as a national Board member from 1998-2000. As State President, she represented the organization at the state capitol in Lansing, lobbying and speaking on legislation of significance to women and their families in such topic areas as: reproductive rights, domestic and sexual violence, lesbian/gay rights, wage equity, family law and public benefits for low-income women and their families. During her tenure she also served as the Co-Chair of the statewide Human Rights task force formed by then-State Representative Floyd Clack to defend affirmative action, a two-year long successful effort to protect workers equal rights.

Ms Woods also served as a member of the Michigan Civil Rights Department's Bias Crime Response Task Force (1995-96), as the President of the Bay County YWCA Board of Directors (1997-2003) and served two 3-year terms as Chair of the Bay City Human Services Committee, receiving its Martin Luther King A Keeping the Dream Alive award in 2001.

In 2003, Gloria joined the Michigan Women's Commission in hopes of better serving the community of women in Michigan. She is especially concerned about single-women headed households, fair compensation and work for social justice.

Gloria has been married for 25 years to Lawrence R. LaMere, Jr. a technician/ technical director and member of NABET-CWA union at WNEM-TV in Saginaw. They live outside of Bay City, MI on the shore of Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay. They have no children but are allowed to live in the same house as their cats (whose actual numbers tend to vary over time).