She grew up in Toronto, studied English and Linguistics at the University of Toronto, and sang in choirs at St. Thomas' Anglican Church and the Trinity College Chapel. She did her PhD at MIT and spent a year as a postdoc at UPenn's Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. In 1999 she returned to Canada to take up a faculty position at the University of Calgary, where she met her husband John. They moved to Victoria in 2010 with their two young daughters, and joined the parish of Christ Church Cathedral in 2013. At CCC, Martha has served as a Sunday school teacher, kitchen volunteer, and member of the search committee for the new Rector and Dean. She is also a novice in the Emmaus Community, a recently founded "new monastic" community. She is an avid CBC listener and reader of the Globe and Mail.