Mary Waltham founded her own consulting company (Mary Waltham Publishing Consultant - MaryWaltham.com) in 1999 to help international scientific, technical and medical publishers confront the rapid change that the networked economy poses to their business models and to develop new opportunities to build publications that deliver outstanding scientific and economic value. Prior to creating her company, Mary was President and Publisher for Nature and the Nature family of journals in the US, and earlier was Managing Director and Publisher of The Lancet.

Mary has worked at a senior executive level in science and medical publishing companies across a range of media, which include textbooks, magazines, newsletters, journals, and open learning materials. A graduate in biology from QMC, University of London, Mary received her education in business administration at Henley.

Mary has been a Non-executive Director of the Institute of Physics Publishing in Bristol and a Foundation Board Director of the Princeton Public Library in New Jersey.  In 2006 she became a Member of the US National CODATA committee. CODATA is concerned with all types of data resulting from experimental measurements, observations and calculations in every field of science and technology.

Mary has served on two US National Academy of Science committees; one on Community standards for sharing publication-related data and materials - responsibilities of authorship in the life sciences and the second a planning committee for the Symposium on Electronic Scientific, Technical and Medical Journal Publishing and its implications.