MARY PIPER HANSEN

Mary Piper Hansen
Mary Piper Hansen has been an editor and writer since 1995. She began her career at a publishing house in Seattle copyediting humor books for adults and children and article writing for a Washington state wine magazine. She continued her career in Boston where she earned her M.A. in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College, graduating summa cum laude, and soon thereafter embarked on a career in educational publishing, working in content development and educational multimedia for a variety of publishers over the years, including Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill, and Happify.com.

Mary has been developing content for digital products since 1999 and was an original team member of iLrn, a Boston-based startup company that produced among the very first digital interactive textbooks in educational publishing. This experience sparked Mary’s passion for writing and developing content for the digital environment, a path that has most recently led to her and her team helping a client use artificial intelligence to deliver content.

In 2010 Mary began building the Piper Editorial team, combining experienced editors, writers, project managers, and subject matter experts, to offer a range of editorial services to Piper’s U.S. and international clients.

Mary lives in North Carolina with her two beautiful children and their dog Waffles. She loves laughing with her kids, traveling every chance she gets, reading fiction, and sitting down at her desk every morning with a hot cup of coffee.

If I weren’t a writer/editor I would be: wishing I were a writer/editor. If I could clone myself and have time for two types of writing/editing jobs, I would work in anything to do with comedy. The creation process with funny people in any medium that makes people laugh, lightens their outlook, and makes everyone feel connected through shared experiences and commiseration would be a dream job. Even sitting around with funny friends, building on each other’s ideas, laughing really hard—that’s a slice of heaven for me.

My morning routine is: get my kids out the door to school; coffee, coffee, coffee; meditate; plan out my day; and then dig in to work! On a good morning there is some form of exercise, but I’m great at thinking of reasons for why it should happen later. 

I most admire: people who are considerate of others’ viewpoints and feelings. Those are the smartest people.

My superpower is: keeping calm and staying positive when life gets intense.