Prior to moving to Ohio, she was a consultant with the multi-disciplinary firm of Wallace Roberts & Todd, based in Philadelphia and San Francisco, and spent two years with the Planning Department of the City of Philadelphia as Project Manager of the Philadelphia Naval Base conversion.

Combining practice with her academic interests, Ruth served throughout these years as an adjunct faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel and Temple Universities, teaching studios and seminars in urban design. From 1990-91, the attractions of the academy gained the upper hand and she took a leave of absence from WRT to Chair the graduate program in Urban Design at Penn.

Ruth graduated from the School of Architecture at The University of Western Australia where she was awarded a Hackett Fellowship for study in the United States. She holds Master's degrees in Architecture, City Planning and Urban Design from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania and is a Loeb Fellow of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard.