Mary Ann Stepp got her undergraduate (BS) and graduate (Ph.D.) degrees in Boston Massachusetts in 1980 and 1985 from Simmons College (Nutrition and Chemistry) and Boston University (Biochemistry) respectively. She did postdoctoral work at MIT in the Cancer Center as an American Cancer Society Fellow and went on to a position as Assistant Scientist and Instructor at Harvard's Schepen's Eye Research Institute. Getting her first NIH RO1 grant by the age of 32, she left Boston to join the GWU Medical School as a Research Assistant Professor in 1992 and has worked her way up to the position of Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology and of Ophthalmology. She has 2 daughters. The older daughter graduated from Clark University in Worcester MA last year and is doing a year of Americorp service this year. The younger daughter is a junior at U of MD at College Park majoring in Mathematics Education.