A resident of South Bend for more than 50 years, Charlotte Pfeifer-Gillam graduated from Indiana University South Bend in 1976 with a B.A. in History and in 1981 with an M.P.A. in Public Affairs.
After her 1976 graduation, she served an internship as the area's first Black female adult probation officer and then became the first Black female director of Delos House, a residential substance abuse treatment facility in South Bend. She also worked at Planned Parenthood of North Central Indiana as the agency's counseling and volunteer coordinator.
After leaving corrections, she established a private consulting group, Charlotte Pfeifer & Associates. The agency specialized in diversity training, board development, and community outreach for businesses and social services agencies.
In 1995, Pfeifer-Gillam returned to IU South Bend and founded the Office of Campus Diversity, which provided access and success for underrepresented faculty, staff, and students. Among its service, the office developed or restored student unions for Latinx, Black, Asian, Indigenous, GLBTIA+, and nontraditional students and students with disabilities, as well as sponsoring yearly cultural celebrations recognizing the contributions of underserved populations.
From 1997 to 2007, with the support of the office, an annual program called Conversations on Race was held. In recognition of this program's best practices in teaching how to have difficult conversations, it received a commendation from President Bill Clinton. Conversations on Race hosted many prominent speakers and public programs in the field of diversity.
Pfeifer-Gillam also served as IU South Bend's director of student and community relations, supervising the Child Development Center, the Student Counseling Center, and student housing, before becoming the campus director of judicial affairs.
In 2013, she retired from her professional staff position but continued to teach as an adjunct appointee in the School of Social Work for the next seven years. She has taught in five units on campus, Public and Environmental Affairs, Labor Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, Social Work, and Education.
From 1995 to 2007, she served as an elected member of the South Bend Common Council. She was the body's first Black president, eventually serving three terms in that role. While on the council, she helped to pass multiple quality-of-life ordinances, including a modification of the South Bend Human Rights Ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity as categories protected from discrimination. The ordinance finally passed in 2011.
Pfeifer-Gillam is an executive board member of 466 Works NDC, a neighborhood development corporation that has built seven houses in South Bend and will have completed 15 new houses by the end of 2022. She is also a board member of the Riverbend Math Center, which encourages interest and confidence in mathematics among people of all ages.
Pfeifer-Gillam has worked as a supporter of the IU South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, located at the former site of a racially segregated city swimming pool. The center now stands as public testimony to racial and human rights advancement. In 2021, Pfeifer-Gillam co-chaired the IU South Bend School of Education's successful Symposium on Educational Inclusion.
She has received numerous awards and recognitions but is especially proud of being a recipient of the SPEA Distinguished Alumni Award in 1985, the Michiana Neal-Marshall Distinguished Alumna Award in 1999, the NAACP Service Award in 2000, induction into the South Bend Hall of Fame in 2002, the South Bend Equality Human Rights Award in 2007, and being the first recipient, in 2009, of the Roland Kelly Award, which recognizes the promotion of diversity, love, and respect for all humanity.
She is married to Verge "Brother Sage" Gillam and has two children and a grandchild.
