She earned her undergraduate degree from Santa Clara University in 1976, and embarked upon a career that included newspaper reporting, legislative work for the U.S. House of Representatives and the California State Assembly Committee on Agriculture, public relations and governmental liaison work with one of California's largest and most complex water agencies, and her own consulting business in the field of water and natural resources management policy. In 1990, a year after she was certified legally blind with a restricted visual field of 8 degrees (a normal visual field is 180-150 degrees), she started law school. In 1994, she earned her juris doctorate with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, was admitted to the California State Bar, and began practicing water and natural resources law with the Sacramento firm of Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard. In 1997, she discovered she had a brain tumor and underwent surgery to remove it. The tumor and the surgery exacerbated and complicated her vision and hearing losses, and she has not practiced law since.

She has practiced healing, however. She now focuses her energy on community volunteer work (she recently completed six years of service, including terms as chair and vice-chair, on the Disability Advisory Committee to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, and is presently involved in implementing Spirit in the Arts, a joint community outreach project of Bread of Life in Davis and North Sacramento Methodist Church), writing, public speaking, and her artwork. She and her husband, Andy Rosten, live in Sacramento.