Beyond Four Walls: Housing & Healing
You can't treat mental health without addressing housing — and you can't keep housing while a mental-health crisis goes unanswered. The intersection Ruby has worked in for 20+ years.
KeynoteWorkshopTraining
Keynotes · Workshops · Trainings
How are we connected?
For more than 20 years, Ruby Mathen has answered that question on the front lines of New York's housing and mental-health crisis — and turned what she's seen into stories that move audiences to act.
Licensed social worker · therapist · supportive-housing program director · professional speaker.
Based in Brooklyn, NYAvailable nationwide & virtually
20+ years in NYC housing & mental health
Program Director, ICL (BTAP III)
Licensed therapist (LMSW)
English · Malayalam · some Hindi
Why Ruby
She doesn't talk about the work from a distance. She's still in it.
Ruby is that rare voice who leads a supportive-housing program, sits with clients as a therapist, and tells the kind of story a room remembers for years. Her talks weave two decades of frontline experience with research and real, anonymized human moments — so audiences leave changed, and with something they can use Monday morning.
Whether the room is full of case managers, executives, students, or community members, she does one thing better than almost anyone: she makes people see each other.
Meet Ruby →Housing and mental health are not two problems. They are one problem wearing two coats.Ruby Mathen, LMSW
Signature Talks
Six talks. One throughline: the people we're tempted to look past.
Each is available as a keynote, workshop, half- or full-day training, panel, or webinar — and tailored to your audience.
How Are We Connected?
A moving, story-driven keynote on finding humanity beyond diagnosis, labels, and a person's worst moment. Equal parts vulnerable and galvanizing.
KeynoteUniversitiesConferences
The Heart Behind the Work
Burnout and compassion-fatigue prevention for the people who carry everyone else — honest, practical, and human.
TeamsAgencies
Unspoken: The Desi Experience
South Asian mental health, stigma, identity, and the cost of living between two worlds — a conversation many communities have never been invited into.
CulturalDEICommunity
What organizers get
Why teams and conferences book Ruby
01
Frontline, not theoretical
She leads a program and treats clients today. Every example is real, current, and battle-tested — never recycled from a textbook.
02
Stories that land
Ruby opens a room with a single moment and doesn't let go. Audiences feel it — and then they act on it.
03
Tools, not just inspiration
Attendees leave with frameworks and concrete steps they can put to work immediately, whatever their role.
04
Connects with any audience
From case managers to executives to community groups, she meets people where they are — and brings them somewhere new.
A taste of the storytelling
“I'll never forget the Tuesday morning I couldn't get out of my car.”
It was year twelve. Coffee in hand, files in my bag — and my hand just… stopped. That morning is how Ruby opens a room full of helpers, and gives them permission to finally name the thing they've been carrying alone. By the end, nobody in the room feels alone in it anymore.
— the opening of “The Heart Behind the Work”
Ways to work with Ruby
Beyond the keynote
For organizations and the people inside them who do the hard, human work.
Speaking Engagements
Conferences · Universities · Annual meetingsKeynotes and breakout sessions that open hearts and sharpen minds — for events that want to be remembered.
Group Training & Workshops
Teams · Agencies · Healthcare & housingTrauma-informed care, burnout prevention, cultural competency, and empathetic leadership — built for your team's reality.
1:1 Consulting & Mentoring
Social workers · Supervisors · LeadersMentoring, supervision support, and program consulting for the helpers and leaders building healthier systems.
Let's talk
Bring Ruby to your stage, your team, or your classroom.
Keynotes, workshops, and trainings — in New York, nationwide, or virtually. Non-profit rates available.