Originally from Hong Kong, Mara spent her formative years riding double decker buses, eating fish ball noodle soup and hiking the Maclehose Trail. After a few years of travel and discovery Mara settled on CU Boulder and has lived in Boulder ever since. After finishing her studies in English Literature she found that she was somehow distinctly qualified to become a chef. She has spent 20 years in some of Boulder's most beloved restaurants learning how to run a line, work fast, make a show-stopping sashimi, craft giant piles of gnocchi from scratch and how to keep her food costs under control. She is now the mother of three precocious foodies and the co-founder of Ozuké, makers of fine kimchi, pickles and kraut. As the company's COO her daily preoccupation is "how to make the very best pickled things" and in the past five years she has been responsible for surreptitiously releasing many trillions of good bacteria into the general populace.