White is a British biological anthropologist, professor, and primatologist at the University of Oregon.
She has studied the socioecology of the bonobo chimpanzee (Pan paniscus) for over 35 years at Lomako Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
She is the foremost American authority on this species in the wild and has done extensive field research on the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzees.
Her advisor at Stony Brook was Professor John Fleagle.
She was also the primary biological anthropologist in a NOVA documentary called The Last Great Ape.