Jeff Gates is a writer and designer. His articles on society and culture have appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, National Public Radio, and on Medium. Interested in the social intersection of art and American culture he is constantly exploring new platforms with which to engage the public. In 1999, he was the first artist to use eBay by auctioning his personal demographics to the highest bidder. In 2008, to the chagrin of even his most ardent supporters, he used Twitter to tweet his root canal live to dentists across North America.

Since 2010, under the guise of the Chamomile Tea Party, he has been remixing World War II-era propaganda posters with new text and imagery about the sorry state of American political discourse. High res copies of these posters can be downloaded for free. In the months just before the 2012 election he purchased ad space in Washington, DC's subway to extend the reach of these posters. In 2018, Google Arts & Culture published a six-part online exhibition of this work with over 120 posters and interpretive text.

He is the Lead Producer in New Media Initiatives at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2005 he proposed the Smithsonian's first blog, Eye Level. He writes about social media's effect on organizational structures. Before coming to the Smithsonian, Gates taught photography and computer graphics at the Maryland Institute College of Art.