After graduating from Syracuse University with a fine arts degree in interior design and a minor in fabric design, Mena pursued additional study in Italy and Japan before locating to Hobe Sound, Florida. During the next twenty years, she and her mother, also an interior designer, operated two retail design practices in Florida and North Carolina. In 2000, Mena moved to Denver, where she opened a retail interior design practice in LoDo, a fashionable district in downtown Denver.

Her design work includes the Palm Beach home of the publisher of Gourmet Magazine; the Ponce de Leon Hotel and Golf Resort in St. Augustine, Florida; The Colgate Inn, a 60-room country inn at Colgate University, in upstate New York; Jupiter Island town hall, in Jupiter Island, Florida; and numerous upscale homes and lofts in Denver, in addition to homes in the Colorado Rockies.