Mandi is a planner and project manager at Huitt-Zollars, where she leads the Houston planning team. She has managed a wide range of planning projects in Houston and around the US across many scales, including Livable Centers studies and greenway planning around Houston, a community-driven vision plan for Galveston, and transit studies in the Twin Cities, Northwest Arkansas, South Carolina, Fort Worth, and Philadelphia.

Mandi is a storyteller, and she uses text and graphics to explain how communities work and get meaningful input. She has a track record of creative and successful public engagement in English and Spanish.

Mandi is a lecturer at Rice University, where she teaches urban transportation. She is a member of the Rice Design Alliance editorial committee. She is frequently invited as a critic and guest speaker to architecture studios at Rice and the University of Houston to talk about planning and urban transportation.