Mara is a freelance advertising creative director working for 13 years in Paris, Toronto and New York after growing up in the Philippines, leading digital campaigns, products and experiences for local and international markets. Team leader, strategic and conceptual thinker, art director, Mara strives for work that has an impact.

Mara was up until recently creative director at AKQA New York for three years on Nike, Starbucks and Verizon. Before that, she was at Tribal DDB Toronto working for McDonald’s. She spent the first half of her career at BETC Paris on Evian, Air France and Kenzo.

Mara was named a Next Creative Leader in 2016, was chosen for Cannes Lions’ ‘See it, Be it’ initiative for promising global creative leaders in 2015, was named one of Mashable's Rising Stars in advertising in 2014. Mara was jury member the One Show in 2015, at the HK Designers Association in Hong Kong in 2016, for Cannes Future Lions 2015 and Canada Marketing Awards 2014.

In 2016, Mara took a break from advertising and launched along with former AKQAers an innovative product to help solve the problem of diversity in technology: by tackling it at its roots, when children start developing aspirations. She launched Secret Code, a personalized children’s book that stars your girl as a tech hero—which enables girls of all ethnicities to see themselves at an early age as fierce robot engineers. Mara won a grant with Sophia Amoruso’s Girlboss Foundation for Secret Code, which has been featured by Mashable, Fast Company, Adweek, PSFK, Elle...Mara was a speaker at the Girlboss Rally in March 2017 a conference showcasing female entrepreneurs and has signed with WME as an author.

Mara currently freelances for 72 and Sunny’s startup Sundae while working on Secret Code.