Mary Carol Mazza

Interdisciplinary by nature, Mary Carol’s background spans social science, business, government and healthcare, and the inner workings of human behavior.  Before PARC and SkyBridge, Mary Carol worked as an independent consultant after completing a joint post-doctoral fellowship in healthcare innovation, health services research, and user experience research at Stanford School of Medicine and Palo Alto Medical Foundation conducting research to improve health systems across the United States and abroad.  Earlier she worked for the government at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission in Austin, aiming to improve systems and government policies related to poverty, healthcare, and social service issues. Currently, she continues these interests through work for a handful of national and international nonprofits.

Prior to moving to the San Francisco Bay Area for her post-doctoral fellowship, Mary Carol completed a Ph.D. in business studies and organizational behavior through a joint program at Harvard Business School and Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences where she focused on suboptimal choices in human behavior and cognitive biases in decision making, aiming to change systems and nudge people to make better decisions. She also holds an A.M. in social psychology from Harvard and an honors B.A. in psychology and economics with concentrations in poverty and women’s studies from Washington and Lee University in Virginia.  She received a Rotary Fellowship for vocational exchange in Hong Kong and, aside from the US, she has studied in Austria, Brazil, Bolivia, and mainland China.

So far, Mary Carol has traveled to all 50 U.S. states and visited nearly 50 countries. She enjoys live music, cultural pursuits, experiencing and learning anything new, and making people laugh and feel loved.