Mara is the founding Executive Director of National Center for Transgender Equality. It was the first professionally-staffed transgender-specific organization working at the national level in the United States. A Pennsylvania native, Mara came to Washington after co-chairing the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition. Mara is a transgender-identified woman who also identifies as a parent and a Pennsylvanian. She is a graduate of Penn State University and did her graduate work at Harvard University in American Government. She has served on the board of Directors of Common Roads, an LGBTQ Youth Group, and on the steering committee of the Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition. Mara has almost twenty-five years of professional experience in social marketing and opinion research.

Mara and NCTE were among the leaders of United ENDA, a coalition of over four hundred LGBT organizations, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force opposing the move led by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT advocacy organization in the United States to gut the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to a draft that excluded protections for gender identity, effectively leaving out transgendered individuals and, potentially, other gender non-conforming people regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Mara works towards the goal of transgender equality through lobbying, public education, and building coalitions with other progressive organizations and causes.