Judith Woodruff, JD

Program Director, Health Workforce
503-220-1958
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Judith Woodruff directs the Foundation’s health workforce development program, primarily aimed at addressing the shortage of nursing personnel in the region.  She has been responsible for facilitating effective partnerships with nursing leaders, community-based organizations, health systems, advocacy groups, government agencies and educational institutions to address the systemic issues related to the nursing shortage in the region. 

Judith is also the Program Director for Partners Investing in Nursing’s Future, NWHF’s national collaborative initiative with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to address nursing issues at the local level through partnerships with community and regional foundations across the country.  The program’s goal is to enable local foundations to act as catalysts in developing strategies necessary to establish a stable and highly skilled professional nursing workforce for the 21st Century.  For Judith, her current position represents a convergence of expertise, experience and interest.

Before joining NWHF in 2001, Judith served as an assistant attorney general with the Oregon Department of Justice, Charitable Activities Section, which has primary regulatory oversight for approximately 12,000 nonprofits in the state. She had also worked in hospital community relations and marketing prior to law school. When NWHF decided to invest more financial resources to nursing, Judith was an ideal choice to head the workforce program and partnership with RWJF in 2005.  She brings a blend of anal ytic,advocacy, strategic vision and leadership skills to ensure long term impact of the foundation’s initiatives. 

In 2009, Judith participated in the Women’s Leadership Forum at the Harvard Business School, and was a 2005 Health Partners Fellow in Collaborative Leadership at the International Center for Health Leadership Development, at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, a program funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.  She was also a Rotary International Scholar in the United Kingdom and received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Oregon, School of Law.

Judith is mother to a bright and healthy elementary-aged son, Jackson, who appears in this picture with her.