Who: Ruth Hobbs
Unit: Senate and Curriculum Services
Position: Associate Academic Governance Officer
Since: June 2016
Professional Background: After graduating from Oxford with a degree in English literature, Ruth began her working life at a small independent publishing house in London (UK, not Ontario). Despite landing a job, which meant she could genuinely read novels and eat cake for a living, the attractions of a role with the UK Government were somehow too good to pass up, and so she swapped early twentieth century fiction for economic growth and business policy at HM Treasury. Four years and a number of interesting postings later, Ruth finds herself on the other side of the Atlantic in the Senate Office at UBC, helping to fill the team’s British quota.
Personal: After almost five years in London, Ruth and her boyfriend decided commuting on the Northern Line wasn’t for them, so in April they put 4706 miles between themselves and the tube and moved to Vancouver. The transition from pale, English workaholics into yoga-loving, weekend-hiking, huge-truck-owning Vancouverites seems to be going well so far, but Ruth can still occasionally be found lamenting the lack of clotted cream, real pubs and BBC dramas on offer in Canada.