Jack F. Zubli was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Baghdad, Iraq on August 17, 1928. He is the oldest of five children born to his parents Regina and Efraim. After graduation high school in 1947, he left Baghdad on August 1, 1948 to go to college in the United States. He attended North Carolina State College in Raleigh, UCLA and City College in Los Angeles, University of California at Berkley and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where he earned his BFA in Architecture in 1953.