Tim White joined the staff of Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History in the fall of 1983 and for the first twenty years at the Peabody White was the Collections Manager for Invertebrate Fossils. In 2003 White move into the newly created position of Director of Collections with oversight of all ten research collections and the collections services. He served as the project manager in the planning, design and construction of Yale's Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center, a 100,000 SF interdisciplinary facility that is home to 16 Yale faculty members from four departments, three research centers and 50 percent of Peabody's research collections. In 2008 he championed the use of the newly acquired Yale West Campus as a home for a portion of Peabody's growing collections. In 2011 and 2012, he directed the inventory and return of more than 45,000 Machu Picchu artifacts to the President of Peru Alan Garcia, the government ministries and the People of Peru. White has been an active member since the establishment of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections in 1985, including being president of SPNHC from 2006 to 2008. He has served on a number of steering committees and advisory boards including the Smithsonian's advisory panel on collections stewardship and Heritage Preservation's Heritage Health Index for the natural sciences.