[6] In 2010, White made his directorial debut with Pelada (PBS, Cinetic), a journey around the world through the lens of pick-up soccer.
[9] That year White was named a United States Artists (USA) Fellow along with Ben Cotner, his co-director on the film.
[12] Ryan White directed Netflix's Emmy-nominated The Keepers in 2017, a seven-part docuseries which investigates the unsolved murder of a young nun in Baltimore and the horrific secrets and pain that linger nearly five decades after her death.
[13] The series won a Cinema Eye Honors Award for Outstanding Achievement in Broadcast Nonfiction Filmmaking and was supported by the Sundance Institute.
[21] Produced by Wilson Cruz and Wanda Sykes, the series combines archival footage with new interviews to look at homophobia, the evolution of LGBTQ characters, and coming out in the TV world.
[22] In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, Queerty named White among the 50 heroes “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people.”[23] In 2021, White directed the documentary short film Coded: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker, which tells the story of legendary illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, whose early-20th century advertisements were coded with LGBTQ imagery that quietly acknowledged a community that was forced to live in the closet.