Mari has a long and checkered past, including stints in journalism, public relations, advertising, marketing, technical writing, graphic design, convention management, alternative lifestyle advocacy, leadership training, and various-and-sundry business documentation and communication. She holds a Bachelor's in Writing from the University of Colorado Denver, an MBA from the prestigious School of Hard Knocks, and has been working on her Honorary Doctorate since childhood.

In a former life, she was a prolific poet, a mediocre vocalist, and a surprisingly good actor, and the host of Denver's poetry slam in the early 90s. At the moment, she is very slowly, and quite surely, developing new forms of interfaith communication that she hopes will change the world. She is also perfecting her fiction and creative non-fiction styles with two concurrent book-length projects dealing with self-actualization, belief systems, universal energy, greed, corruption, and murder.