Born in East Africa and raised in Canada, Ruby received her B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, ON. She received her PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa in December 2003, which focused on images of Islamic women in various media discourses, including film and television. She followed the PhD with a postdoctoral fellowship, which focused on issues of gender, ethnicity and identity amongst Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu immigrant youth in Canada.