Ruth Whitehouse is an undergraduate research fellow at the University of Maryland, where she is pursuing a bachelor's degree in business administration and management. She is a part of the UMD FIRE (First Year Innovation and Research Experience) program. Through this program she has become a project manager in the Global Development and Design internship, where she took charge of a group research project for an AI Ethics Toolkit that was sponsored by the National Science Foundation. She was also influential in the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Free Wi-Fi for all initiative, where she was the supervisor of the team's research. Along with the supervisor and co-author of the project proposal for DICT. Before becoming the project manager for the Global Development and Design internship, she was the student leader of her 4 student research team in the CellEx stream. Here, she made group decisions and communicated them to the professor for the research of Ribosomal DNA. It was her decision to change from RPL31 to RPS4X, and she was the student who managed the relationships and time of her teammates. Ruth is passionate about business and aspires to be an entrepreneur or executive in the future. She has honed her leadership, organization, problem-solving, and collaboration skills in various academic and extracurricular activities, such as her position, the Percussion Director in the marching band and music program, the vice president of the National English Honor Society, the Student Director of the Women's Empowerment Union and the co-president of the Gay-Straight Alliance in high school. Along with these leadership experiences, she also gained time management experience in her time as a member of five other honors societies.She also has valuable customer service, teamwork, and money-handling skills from being a food server at IHOP.Throughout her life, Ruth has been a practitioner of Martial Arts, a Percussionist, and an Astronomer. These interests have shaped her into who she is today. She is a first dan black belt in Shotokan Karate and Eskrima, which led her to join the UMD Black Belt Club, where she teaches these skills to others. She was in charge of the percussion program in high school and also played the Tenor Drum.Above all, she is a lover of astronomy, and desires to bring humanity forward into space. Ruth is driven to build a positive future for her generation and the world at large, and she is starting now by studying at one of the world's preeminent universities for leadership and business.