Liz Gres
Liz Gres is the deputy director of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Racial Justice Center. SEIU unites two million members across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. SEIU’s Racial Justice Center drives the union’s anti-racist agenda and supports its commitment to become an anti-racist organization.
Liz has played a critical role in SEIU’s racial justice journey since 2014. She was a member of the three-person team that facilitated the work of SEIU's Racial Justice Task Force as it deliberated over the union’s commitment and contribution to dismantling structural and anti-Black racism. She supported that task force in advancing a resolution that has significantly furthered the union’s racial justice program at SEIU’s 2016 convention. She has been on staff at its Racial Justice Center since its inception.
Liz’s experiences as a child of white Polish immigrant parents have deeply marked her commitment to racial and economic justice. Coming up in a segregated Chicago, she got clear lessons about how she and her family were to take on and back whiteness while rejecting and fearing communities of colour in this new country and home.
Alongside her union work, Liz believes in creating community wherever you are. She is a founder & member of her neighbourhood’s mutual aid group and on the board of its development council.
Though Liz has ventured from Chicago to live and work in other places she has always made her way back to Chicago where she currently resides with her partner, two kids, and a cat.