Ruth White is co-founder and executive director of the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare and former director of Housing and Homelessness for CWLA. Ruth works closely with professionals and people personally impacted by social programs to improve public policy to ease access to economic resources and to reduce government intervention into peoples’ lives. Since beginning her work to expand housing and self-sufficiency resources for families and youth involved with child welfare and early childhood education programming, Ruth has successfully advocated for over $300 million in funding for new housing subsidies and services. In 2020, Ruth partnered with Connecticut Head Start Association to create the Early Childhood Housing Outreach team and successfully opened a conduit to immediate access for Housing Choice Vouchers for Head Start and Early Head Start Families. In 2018, Ruth partnered with current and former foster youth from ACTION Ohio to design and deliver the youth-written Fostering Stable Housing Opportunity proposal directly to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The HUD Leadership Team adopted the on-demand, synchronized, and revolutionary distribution mechanism for housing choice vouchers as the basis for the Foster Youth to Independence Initiative in 2019. Ruth is a certified Assisted Housing Manger and holds a master’s degree in social administration from Case Western Reserve University and a bachelor’s degree in social work from The Ohio State University. She is currently a doctoral candidate and professor at the Catholic University of America