Ruth Charbonneau, RN, JD
Associate Director

Ruth Charbonneau is The Lambert Center for the Study of Medicinal Cannabis & Hemp’s new Associate Director. Prior to joining Jefferson, she provided regulatory consulting services on issues related to healthcare licensing and operations. Charbonneau also served in executive leadership teams within state government, most recently as the Chief of Staff for the Department of Health. She was a New Jersey Governor’s Fellow, and in her various management and oversight responsibilities within state government she was responsible for legal and regulatory oversight including, but not limited, to the development of the initial rules governing New Jersey’s medicinal marijuana program, policy and research, health data analysis and the development of a query-based system to access public health datasets, statistics, and information. She served as the project coordinator for the Governor’s Commission to assess New Jersey’s public research institutions.

Before working in government, Charbonneau began her career as a nurse and worked in a variety of settings and specialty areas, gaining an understanding of healthcare systems. She worked in academic medical centers, community hospitals, urgent care, and home care with experience in pediatrics, operating room (circulating and scrub), inpatient oncology and hospice.

She received an RN diploma from Faulkner Hospital School of Nursing, a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Clark University, and a JD from Case Western University School of Law.