Much of Gilmer's work has been in
ethnomathematics; she was described as a "leader in the field" by
Scott W. Williams, a mathematics professor at
SUNY Buffalo. In the early 1980s, Gilmer was the first African American woman to be on the board of governors of the Mathematical Association of America. In 1985 she co-founded and the executive board of International Study Group on Ethnomathematics (ISGEm), of which she was the President from 1985 to 1996. In 2008, Gilmer became the president of Math-Tech, a corporation that aims to take new research material and create more effective mathematics curricula, particularly with respect to women and minorities. == Death ==