Senior Director of Policy Advocacy
Rachel Ruttenberg is currently the Senior Director of Policy Advocacy at Heartland Alliance. In this role, she leads our state and federal policy teams, which focus on economic, health, and criminal legal system reform. She also provides support on a variety of other matters that impact program participants, such as gun violence prevention, housing, and issues impacting immigrants.
Previously, she was the Executive Director of a non-profit called the Family Defense Center, a legal services organization that represented parents in the Illinois child welfare system. At the end of her tenure, Rachel led the organization through a merger; the new organization now operates as Ascend Justice. Before that, Rachel was the Chicago Director of the Marilyn G. Rabb Foundation, which provided after-school programs to Chicago high school students. In 2012, she served as Assistant Counsel to the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and, before that, she spent six years in various roles at Chicago Public Schools, including as Special Assistant to the Chief Administrative Officer.
Rachel received her J.D. with a concentration in public interest law from Chicago-Kent College of Law. She has an M.S. in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern University and a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In her spare time, Rachel is involved in politics in her community and can be found at the beach with her family.