Following a degree in Agricultural Economics, Mary spent much of her early career working in business management and property. This included 9 years building up and running one of the largest student letting agencies in Newcastle, office management and valuation with General Accident and several years with land agents Savills in York, building up their country house sales department.

Mary has specialist knowledge of protected species, licensing and the planning process and has a class 2 and CL21 (low impact) bat licence, extensive experience in a range of protected species work including bat survey and assessment as well as other protected species surveys including otter, water vole, badger and red squirrel and biodiversity net gain. She has undertaken a range of courses on protected species survey and plant identification.  She now works as a consultant for E3, primarily specialising in bat assessments and licensing.