Mackenzie earned a B.S. in Mathematics with a minor in Chinese at BYU. Mackenzie also studied at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China during the Fall of 2014. Mackenzie joined IDeA Labs during the Fall 2015 semester with the interest of studying the connections between humanities and mathematics. She worked on modeling convergence in conversations as a stability analysis.

Mackenzie is from Plymouth, Minnesota, where she found her love for the outdoors. This has lead her to studying bushcraft, and she regularly goes on wilderness survival trips. She was a member of the HumorU stand-up comedy club at BYU where she tried her best to be funny.

Mackenzie is a member of the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society, and also earned the BYU Mathematics Distinguished Student Award.