Mara is an economist and public policy analyst who specialises in energy and climate economics. Prior to commencing at the Centre for Policy Development she held a research position at the McKell Institute. She holds a PhD (Economics) from the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU where she worked with government and industry assessing the impacts of ACT energy policy on households. Her academic work has been published in Energy Economics, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Economic Record among others.