Ruth Shaber

Ruth Shaber spent 25 years as an OB-GYN at Kaiser Permanente before deciding that the most powerful thing she could do for women’s health was change where the money flows.

In 2014, she founded Tara Health Foundation as a spend-down private foundation committed to 100% mission alignment, meaning every dollar, in grants, direct investments, and public market holdings, works toward the same goal: health and economic justice at the intersection of race and gender. As the foundation’s corpus grew from $10 million to over $100 million deployed, Ruth developed new tools and frameworks for gender-lens investing, funded research in partnership with Wharton and Penn, and expanded into private investments, taking direct stakes in companies advancing women’s health and bringing other funders alongside her to build lasting infrastructure in the field.

She co-founded Rhia Ventures, a collective of foundations and investors bringing new types of capital to reproductive health in the United States, at a moment when that work has never been more urgent. And she co-authored The XX Edge, a rigorously data-driven book that makes the financial case for gender-diverse investment teams, showing that gender inclusivity is not just a moral argument but a performance advantage. The book launched the Diverse Investing Collective, which aims to increase assets managed by gender-diverse and racially diverse teams to 33% by 2033.

Forbes named her to its 2020 Impact 50 list of investors seeking profit and pushing for change. She was honored with the Lucretia Mott Award by Women’s Way in 2025. She is a scientist who decided that capital is one of the most powerful medicines available, and she has spent the last decade proving it. We are honored to celebrate her here.