Mary grew up in nearby Woodland, where she learned from an early age how closely health outcomes are tied to socioeconomic status and other seemingly non-medical factors. During undergraduate, she worked with the Knights Landing One Health Center, a student-run clinic in rural Knights Landing, and The Resource Desk, an organization which provides resource referrals to families in the Oak Park, Sacramento area. Together, these experiences shaped her goal of earning an MPH in order to create an evidence-based community health program which works to address the social determinants of health within the clinical setting.