Randy grew up in Virginia on the campus of a boy’s boarding school, where her father was headmaster. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Vassar College in New York, where she also minored in history and biology, and then did a year of research at the London School of Economics.
Having stumbled across a magazine about the work of IofC, then Moral Re-Armament, in her college library, she was amazed when her boy friend wrote her from Oxford about his own transforming contact with individuals engaged with the program. Intrigued by the change in that man – Dick Ruffin - when he returned from his first year in UK, Randy decided to explore IofC herself while at LSE. She was deeply impressed by people who were so involved in the life and needs of their country and who 'walked the talk' in their own lives. Additionally, she met a remarkable group of young Indians from different religions, castes, economic and educational backgrounds who had created a musical show giving evidence of how Indians could work together to overcome divisions and corruption to achieve the development their country needed. As a result she went to India in the autumn of 1966 and has worked with IofC ever since.
She and Dick were married in 1970 in Washington and, after a year during which he completed his assignment at the Pentagon, spent three years with IofC in Europe. Since then they have lived in the U.S., where Randy and Dick worked in Richmond for 6 years, most of that time in a home loaned to them by an elderly couple, the William Chapins, for the purpose of healing divisions and building trust and community in the city. They moved to Washington, DC, in 1980, where they hosted the IofC center for 27 years. Randy has also edited the U.S. newsletter and served as Program Director for the Caux Scholars Program and as its Chair. They are currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia. She and Dick have two adult children, Catherine, a behavioral specialist who is founder and CEO of Lancaster Consulting, married to Sven Lancaster and living in Australia with their two boys, and David, a musician, minister, facilitator and educator, who is living in the state of Vermont.
