Mariana Smit Vega Garcia is an Assistant Professor at Western Washington University, working in geometric analysis and partial differential equations. In this interview, Mariana speaks, among other things, about her math-life balance, the experience of representing different minorities and the joy of teaching mathematics. In addition: lots of friendly advice for undergrads!Mariana's webpage: http://faculty.wwu.edu/smitvem/​Photo: from Mariana's webpage