CDF Leadership & Staff

David Ruffin
Senior Communications Associate

David Ruffin is Senior Communications Associate at the Children's Defense Fund where he drafts and places features, columns and editorials on a range of national issues affecting children including the Cradle to Prison Pipeline^® Campaign, child health care and gun violence.

During the past 25 years, Mr. Ruffin has worked as a journalist, editor and policy analyst based in Washington, D.C. He served as a one-man Washington bureau for Black Enterprise magazine writing features on national policy, legislation and politics. For 13 years, he was editor and a principal writer for Focus, the monthly policy magazine of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a progressive Black think tank. Before joining CDF, he served as Deputy Director of Public Affairs at the national office of the AFL-CIO. Mr. Ruffin is the author of a six-book series for children about the jobs of White House cabinet secretaries titled, Your Government in Action.

He has served on the boards of Hoop Dreams, a Washington, D.C.-based scholarship and mentoring program, and the Washington, D.C., affiliate of Habitat for Humanity for eight years, serving as President in 1999 and 2000.

Mr. Ruffin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Hiram College in Ohio and has done graduate study in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has traveled to 40 countries on five continents.