She was a Professor of Geosciences at San Francisco State University. She was Associate Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at the SFSU. In 2005, White was a visiting geology department professor at the University of New Orleans, where she mentored students and helped to promote opportunities for geoscience majors at college to African Americans. Since 2012 she has been the director for education and outreach at the Museum of Paleontology, University of California Berkeley. Public outreach has been a major part of her career. White coordinated the Minority Participation in the Earth Sciences program with the US Geological Survey from 1988 to 1995. In 1994 she supervised the NASA Sharp-Plus program at San Francisco State in 1994. In 2000, White was appointed Chair of the Geological Society of America committee on Minorities and Women in the Geosciences. She was the Project Director and Principal Investigator of the to bring geoscience education to high school students and teachers in San Francisco. This program, funded by the , was a partnership between , , local high schools from the , local community groups and government agencies. White featured on Bill Nye the Science Guy. She was featured in the PBS documentary Making North America in 2015. White received the first Bromery Award from the Geological Society of America in 2008 in recognition of her work with minorities in the field. She continues her public outreachwork through her current position as Director of Education and Outreach at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. White was elected as a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences in 2000 and a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2009. Since 2017, she has served as a Co-PI on the program. The program's goal is to create more accessible, culturally sensitive, and inclusive field experiences, particularly for students underrepresented in the geosciences.
Selected publications
White, L. D., R.E. Garrison, and J.A. Barron. 1992. Miocene intensification of upwelling along the California margin as recorded in siliceous facies of the Monterey Formation and offshore DSDP sites. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 64.1: 429-442. White, L.D., and P.A. Holroyd. 2018. Transfer of the San Francisco State University collection to the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Journal of Paleontology 93: 196. White, L., and R. Bell. 2019. Why diversity matters to AGU, Eos 100, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EO136457. Ellwood, E.R., Sessa, J.A., Abraham, J.K., Budden, A.E., Douglas, N., Guralnick, R., Krimmel, E., Langen, T., Linton, D., Phillips, M., Soltis, P.S., Studer, M., White, L.D., Williams, J., Monfils, A.K., 2020. Biodiversity Science and the Twenty-First Century Workforce, , Vol. 70 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz147
