Mary Kay has earned the Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) and the Certified Benefits Professional (CBP) designations from World at Work. Mary Kay holds a Master of Science Degree in Human Resources Management from the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University.

She has worked in generalist, compensation, and benefits roles for Roche Diagnostics, Irwin Financial Corporation, Bank One, and Sony Corporation. She currently owns her own compensation and benefits consulting firm, Human Resource Results and has more than 15 years of experience in compensation and benefits positions in both manufacturing and service industries.

Mary Kay serves as the Chairperson of the HR Consultant's Forum, a Special Interest Group of the Human Resource Association of Central Indiana and is the Immediate Past President for the Compensation and Benefits Professionals of Indiana. She currently teaches compensation courses at IUPUI. Her specialty areas include developing and implementing base/variable compensation plans and related employee communications; job analysis/description and market pricing of jobs; job equity analysis and pay adjustments; designing/implementing welfare and retirement benefit plans; and overseeing the work of benefit vendors and managing benefit selection processes. Mary Kay also mentors and trains HR professionals in compensation and benefit-related work assignments.