Mary Fund worked for the Kansas Rural Center (KRC) for most of its forty-year existence, serving as Executive Director since January 2015. She directed KRC's early water policy work, writing extensively on Kansas water issues. Among her publications are papers and monographs on water quality, quantity, and management published by the KRC and the Kansas Law Review. Fund is the editor of KRC's newsletter, Rural Papers, and also edits Policy Watch, KRC's legislative weekly update. From 1995 to 2012, Fund managed KRC's Clean Water Farms Project, working with a network of over 300 farmers and ranchers on whole-farm planning and farming practices that protect water quality. In addition to her work for KRC, she served on numerous task forces and advisory teams for organizations and state entities. Fund served on the Board of Directors of the National Organic Farming Research Foundation from 2010 to 2017. At the time of this interview, Fund served on the Delaware WRAPS (Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy) Advisory Team, the Kansas Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Alternative Crops Advisory Team and represents KRC on the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. She and her husband, Ed Reznicek, own and operate a 400-acre certified organic crop and livestock farm in northeastern Kansas.

In her 2020 oral history interview, Mary Fund talks about her involvement in water policy from the perspective of her work at the Kansas Rural Center (KRC) since the late 1970s. Fund authored Water in Kansas, A Primer, published in 1984 by the KRC. In this interview, she talks about the difficulty of making changes in farming methods that will conserve both water and soil when those changes require farmers to voluntarily alter decades of entrenched farming practice. Fund also observes that shifting the political culture is key to making voluntary changes work.