Marilyn is a well-regarded Python Trainer for the Industry, and a well-loved Python Instructor for UCSC-Extension in the Silicon Valley. Her history shows her to be an accomplished software engineer as well, demonstrating a knack for finding simple solutions to complex problems, articulating clear explanations, and engendering cooperation.

Dr. Davis earned her degree from UCSD in Theoretical Radio Astronomy. In the course of that work, her interest shifted to Software Engineering. She has worked with many different computer languages, and has made software for Computer-Aided Instruction, Astronomy, Statistics, Environmental Research, Operations Research, Email Service, and Electronic Democracy.

Marilyn was an early contributor to the Open Source movement, authoring eVote/Clerk, software for consensus-building and decision-making on the network. Her PC Planetarium was sold by the Sierra Club Catalogue. Her early work in editing radio astronomy data is still in use today. Her program Basic Primer was a pioneering work in Computer-Aided Instruction and was published by IBM.

Motivated by a love for teaching, she has taught Mathematics and Physics, as well as Software Engineering. She taught C at UCSC-Extension for 14 years before she encountered Python. Python has been her focus since her first sight of Python code. She has been teaching and using Python since 2006.