Richard White
Executive Director
Richard White’s experience spans a forty-three-year career substantially spent as a public servant with supervisory and executive level experience in law enforcement and public retirement systems.
Richard worked in the criminal justice system and private security for forty years which included thirty-four years as a sworn law enforcement officer. His responsibilities as a first-line supervisor with the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department (OCSD) included assignments in the jail system, patrol operations, reserve deputy force operations and training bureau. The OCSD is a large multi-faceted law enforcement agency in a county with a population of over three million residents and provided direct policing services to approximately 650,000 residents, as well as, managed one of the largest county jail systems in the nation. Mr. White retired from the OCSD after 32 years of service.
Mr. White served on the Political Action Committee for over twenty-five years with the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, which represents over 3,400 sworn peace officers in Orange County (CA) and is affiliated with local, state and national law enforcement groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police.
During his law enforcement career, Mr. White served nine years as a member of the Board of Trustees on the Orange County (CA) Employees’ Retirement System (OCERS) having been elected by the law enforcement, fire service and probation officer active member participants in the pension fund. During this period, OCERS managed an administrative budget of approximately $11 Million and a trust fund with approximately $10 Billion in assets. There were 39,000 active and retired members of OCERS in 2012.
Mr. White served one-year as Secretary and four years President of the Board of Directors of the State Association of County Retirement Systems (SACRS) which is an organization of 20 independent county retirement systems in California that were created as part of the County Employees Retirement Law (CERL). SACRS supports its system members by providing education and insight to trustees and staff so that they can be more effective stewards of their systems' pension plans. Investment assets of the 20 county retirement systems exceeded $110 billion and represented contributions from 500,000+ current and future public sector plan beneficiaries throughout California.
Following retirement, Mr. White served as a Retirement Administrator for the Mendocino County Employees’ Retirement Association (MCERA) where his principal responsibilities include management of the trust fund; delivery of retirement, disability and death benefits to eligible members; administration of cost-of-living programs; and general assistance in retirement and related benefits. Richard managed an administrative budget of approximately $800,000 and a trust fund with approximately $440 Million in assets. There were 2,900 active and retired members of MCERA in 2014.
In June 2020 Mr. White was named interim Executive Director of the Illinois Police Officers’ Pension Investment Fund (IPOPIF). The Fund was created, in 2020, by the State of Illinois and will be responsible for the consolidation of the investment assets of the 357 Article 3 downstate and suburban police pension funds into a single statewide investment pool with an estimated $8.5 billion in assets under management.
Richard earned a Master of Science degree in Human Resources and Organizational Development with an emphasis on Leadership in Police Organizations awarded from the University of San Francisco, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati and an Associate of Arts Degree in Police Science from Farmingdale State College in New York. Mr. White has attended numerous professional development courses in both law enforcement and public pension administration.
Email Richard at rwhite@ipopif.org.