About Ruth

Ruth Everard is a civil & commercial mediator, resolving people's disputes before they get to court; and she also runs an engineering social enterprise in Cambridge, UK. After graduating from St John's College, Oxford she trained as a solicitor in the City. She later left the legal profession, and started to move towards her present career in 2008.

When not at work, you will find Ruth spending time with her partner, Dave, and their dog, Sprocket, plus their wider family and friends. She enjoys cooking, swimming, theatre and gigs. Ruth and Dave share a love of rowing. 

Ruth is loyal, funny, passionate, tea-fuelled, independent-minded, imaginative, logical and ethical. Some of her most recent purchases were potting compost and historical novels; and she worries that this makes her sound middle-aged. She appears very confident, but understands that everybody puts on an act, including herself. She prefers dogs to cats. She holds a silver Blue Peter badge. 

What makes Ruth remarkable is that she lives a fairly ordinary life with a serious physical disability called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which causes general muscle weakness. She cannot stand or walk at all, is very weak over her whole body and needs help with most physical tasks day-to-day.