She previously lived in Chicago and worked with the Second City's touring company and an all-female iO Theater troupe.
Born and raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts,[2] Gates said she started doing improvisational theatre in high school, and then continued "in college sort of as a way to meet people."
[7] She also performed with Casual Encounters for iO, Shinbone Alley for Chemically Imbalanced Comedy, and the Fallen Elegant.
[6] At an iO showcase before the forty-fourth season of Saturday Night Live, NBC's long-running sketch comedy show, Gates performed pieces about "a plantation docent describing her awful life, a teacher humiliated by a fall in front of the class, and White House advisor Stephen Miller," according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
[8] After her fourth week at SNL, Gates was noted for her sketch "Teacher Fell Down," which Alison Herman of The Ringer called "a gloriously weird bit from the Jonah Hill episode centering on [Kate] McKinnon's drama queen of a driver's ed instructor,"[9] She is a head writer for the show as of the second half of the show's 47th season.