Insight Board Member

After a very successful 30-year career as a strategic human resources executive with top
Fortune 100 companies, Ruth Ross opened up her own consulting firm to focus on the
intersection where human capital and business process fuse together in organizations.
Her areas of expertise include leading organizations through times of change, leader
coaching and development, employee development, managing through mergers and
acquisitions and culture integration.
Prior to starting R Squared Resources in September of 2011, Ruth was the Executive
Vice President of Human Resources for the Corporate Finance organization at Wells
Fargo Bank.  At Wells Fargo, she managed all human resources activities for the
company-wide finance community, including employee engagement, merger integration,
employee relations, compensation, talent management, diversity and leadership and
management development.  Her journey from New York City to San Francisco started in
1996 when she was recruited to join Charles Schwab as a senior HR leader for two
business units, Investment Management and Retirement Plan Services.  After two years
in that role, Ruth created the new company-wide HR Policies and Practices
function, encompassing Employee Relations, HR Policy, HR Metrics and Pre-Eminent
Employer Initiatives. During her tenure at Schwab, the company grew from 4,000 to
26,000 employees and then undertook a major initiative, overseen by Ruth, to right size
the entire company following the dot.com bust and market downturn. This included layoff
program design, transition plans, selection methodology, manager training and
communications.
Her career in New York was centered on the Financial Services industry where she led
human resources organizations at Citibank, PaineWebber and American
Express/Shearson Lehman Brothers. In addition, she served as an HR Director for
Estee Lauder cosmetics.  Throughout her corporate HR career, Ruth was an integral
business partner to her line clients and coached or counseled hundreds of managers on
their journey to be the best leader they could be.
Ruth became a respected thought leader on the critical business imperative of Employee
Engagement and is a frequently requested speaker at leading companies and industry
conferences and has been quoted in numerous publications such as Forbes.com, The
Boston Globe, Inc. magazine and the Huffington Post. She is the author of “Coming
Alive: The Journey To Reengage Your Life And Career”.
In 2017 she relocated to St Petersburg, Florida where she is a member of two non-profit
boards and is a partner at SeedFunders, a venture capital firm focusing on supporting
early stage Florida based tech startups. In November she joined the St Petersburg
Group as a partner and is dedicated to helping our city grow and prosper. Her areas of
expertise are in all aspects of the human resources lifecycle, organizational design,
mergers and acquisitions, business reengineering and employee communications.

Ruth holds a BS from Syracuse University in Human Development and a MS. Ed in
Counseling from Northeastern.