Ruth Gao
Associate General Counsel
Ruth Gao joined the Robert Wood Johnosn Foundation in 2023 in the Law department. In her role, she supports and advises the Impact Investments department in the structuring and deployment of program-related investments, contracts, grants, and other funding. She also supports several other departments in the Foundation’s philanthropic activities.
Ruth has over a decade of experience representing investors and investment managers in both the United States and internationally. Immediately prior to joining the Foundation, Ruth was associate general counsel at Calvert Impact, Inc., a global nonprofit investment firm that seeks to use capital in innovative and collaborative ways to create an equitable and sustainable world. At Calvert, she worked with their investment team on a range of investments and provided counsel to partners seeking to raise impact investing funds and to assess potential investment opportunities. Ruth also worked in private practice as an associate at Ropes & Gray LLP and O’Melveny & Myers LLP, where she counseled fund managers and limited partners in the forming and raising of and investment in private equity funds. She also maintained an active pro bono practice for various not-for-profits and small businesses.
In her time as a Fellow for the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship at the NYU School of Law, Ruth supervised student attorneys in the provision of pro bono services to various impact and non-profit organizations.
Ruth graduated from New York University School of Law with a Juris Doctor degree and from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.