About Dr. Ruby Payne

Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D., is an expert on the mindsets of economic classes and on crossing socioeconomic lines in education, work, and for social change. Dr. Payne’s work stems from more than 30 years of firsthand experience in public schools. She became known for helping students from all economic backgrounds to achieve academic success. Dr. Payne presents her work throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia, China, and India. She presents a variety of workshops based on her books together with strategies for successfully raising student achievement and negotiating economic class barriers. She received her B.A. from Goshen (IN) College, a master’s degree in English Literature from Western Michigan University, and her doctorate in Educational Leadership & Policy from Loyola University in Illinois.

About Philip Devol

Philip DeVol has been training and consulting on poverty issues since 1997. He works with organizations to redesign programs to better serve people in poverty, as well as with communities to systemically address community sustainability. Philip is the author of Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World: Building Your Resources for a Better Life, a life-planning workbook for people in poverty that brings together three primary influences: Ruby Payne’s work on the hidden rules of class, research on knowledge transfer, and the knowledge of participants living in poverty. Philip builds on his 19 years as director of an outpatient substance abuse treatment facility where he designed treatment programs and collaborative systems for school-based prevention, school-based intervention, and Ohio’s first alternative school for recovering young people. The agency also developed specific treatment programs for women and adolescents, plus a substance abuse treatment program for a correctional facility.