The first half of Ruth's career was spent in teaching and school leadership where Ruth was responsible for curriculum design and innovation in a community led school and worked in educational policy on issues of diversity and self-management in educational provision. She moved into an academic role in 2000 focused on research and development into how individuals, teams and organizations learn and change. Ruth is one of the originators of a self-assessment tool for strengthening self-directed change in learning power; the most recent version is CLARA (Crick Learning for Resilient Agency profile).

In Sydney Ruth leads an integrated research, teaching and engagement programme focusing on the social arrangements and technical resources to needed to support networked improvement communities in education and industry. Her research focuses on processes of learning, adaptation and feedback in complex social systems. In Bristol she works with systems Engineers focusing on the development of resilience and sustainability in infrastructure design and the development of business models, which facilitate collaboration and innovation.