Ruth Schoenbach is the codirector of the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd, a nonprofit research, development, and service agency. At WestEd, Ms. Schoenbach and codirector Cynthia Greenleaf developed the Reading Apprenticeship® instructional framework. SLI has developed national training institutes, regional professional development services, a growing cadre of certified consultants, and numerous publications and tools for classroom and professional development use. Educators in at least twenty-eight states and Germany have participated in SLI-led professional development. In 2005 SLI’s Reading Apprenticeship® Academic Literacy course was chosen as one of only two adolescent literacy programs to be evaluated as part of the United States Department of Education’s Enhanced Reading Opportunities study.

Ms. Schoenbach earned her BA in social sciences from the University of California, Berkeley; a bilingual multiple subjects teaching credential from San Francisco State University; and an EdM in teaching, curriculum, and learning environments from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.