Mary’s work as a consultant has been wide-ranging, with clients including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Commonwealth Secretariat, the IFRC, The Sphere Project and the United Nations system, including UNDP, UNDRR and UN Women. In recent years she has worked with UNDRR on developing the Gender Action Plan to Support Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (Sendai GAP), their organizational gender strategy and as expert content editor on two of their flagship global assessment reports on disaster risk reduction, GAR2019 and GAR2022. Other projects with ADB in recent years related to law and policy frameworks to support women’s resilience to disasters and climate change, urban resilience, and disaster resilience of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Southeast Asia. She has also undertaken key research reports for UNDRR and UN Women on the gender equality dimensions of disaster and climate risk, and for IFRC on gender equality and protection from sexual-and-gender-based-violence (SGBV) in disasters. Her work and publications have frequently included international and comparative law and analysis, including a study of the climate and disaster laws in all 53 member countries for the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Mary combines rigorous research methodology with clear analysis, plain-English report writing and a practical approach to recommendations. She is adept at cross-cultural communication, facilitation, training and capacity development, and working with teams from different language and cultural backgrounds. She is also able to read and research in French and Spanish.

After practising law in Melbourne, Australia, in the field of employment and anti-discrimination law, Mary undertook postgraduate study in Geneva, Switzerland, where she obtained her DEA (Masters equivalent) and doctorate in public international law.