Ruth Purtilo began her career as a physical therapy clinician and clinical educator in rural North Dakota, Chicago’s near north and Boston, with short term stints in Cartagena Colombia and Swaziland (now Eswatini) South Africa. Her professional and personal experience in these diverse clinical, societal, and cultural settings awakened a desire to help health professions students prepare for the “larger human, cultural and societal issues” they would face. At Harvard Divinity School she earned a master’s degree, then went on to the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to complete a PhD, the combination preparing her with a solid background in religious and philosophic ethics traditions.

Ruth’s career as a health care ethics consultant, educator, researcher, author, and member of several national and international ethics policy initiatives now spans 40 years. She currently is in “active retirement” from an ethics career in several settings in the US and abroad. She is a professor emerita at both Creighton University in Omaha as a recognition of her leadership as the Director of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics and clinical ethics consultant, and at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions for her contribution in creating and teaching in a required ethics core curriculum while also serving as the Henry Knox Sherrill Ethicist-in-Residence at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a past president of the Society for Health and Human Values (cum American Society for Bioethics and Humanities) and of the Society for Law Medicine and Ethics. Ruth is a fellow of the Hastings Centercher topic of discussionnnerenterfellow. She has been awarded five honorary degrees for her contributions in health professions ethics.