Title: Project Developer
Organization: Mercy Housing California
Location: San Francisco, CA

Fiona Ruddy is originally from Detroit, Michigan where she worked for five years in community development and healthy food access at the Eastern Market Partnership, the non-profit management organization for the country’s longest-running public market. At EMP Fiona created and facilitated the Detroit Community Markets network, Detroit’s first coalition of faith-based and non-profit community stakeholders working to advance food justice and diversify the city’s grocery economy.

As a resident of the Detroit area, one of the most segregated metropolitans in the country, Fiona is familiar with, and deeply committed to undoing, racist policies in the built environment which lead to deadly health disparities. To help deepen her skills she decamped to Detroit’s west coast sibling – Oakland – to enroll in UC Berkeley’s dual masters program in city planning and public health. During graduate school Fiona had the opportunity to work with organizations across a variety of sectors – foundations, banking, media advocacy, and think-tanks – with the core theme of embedding a health equity approach to policies and programs impacting the built environment.

After receiving her degrees in 2018, Fiona joined San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, where she worked in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood on occupied rehabs of public housing and creating a health and housing framework for the real estate development team. In 2020 she joined Mercy Housing California’s San Francisco office where she is currently working on construction of two 100% affordable housing developments, including the first development in San Francisco with homes set-aside for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.