
Mandi is a proud member of AEA and has her B.F.A. in acting from Webster University’s Conservatory of Fine Arts. After graduation, she returned to her hometown of Atlanta. The past few years have found her starring in productions with Georgia Shakespeare Festival, 7 Stages, Georgia Ensemble Theatre, Aris Theatre, The Atlanta Shakespeare Company, and The Fern Theatre, where she played Romeo in an all-female cast of "Romeo and Juliet". She played Anne Frank in "And Then They Came for Me", which received a Suzi Bass nomination as Outstanding Performance Ensemble in the Young Audiences category.
Her passion for educational theatre led her to Forefront Arts, where she served as the Lead Teaching Artist and Education Director. She led their Summer Drama Camps for five years and helped develop their Children’s Theatre series. Mandi has also worked as a voice-over artist, specifically as a narrator for ListenUp Audiobooks. Her favorite audiobook title, “The Forgotten Sisters” by Shannon Hale, is available on Audible.
Mandi received her MFA in Acting from The University of Central Florida/Orlando Shakespeare Theatre in 2019. Her thesis production of All-Female Twelfth Night performed in March of 2018 at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center.
Mandi met her husband, Chris Rushing while working at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival. The two then toured together as Romeo & Juliet and Lord & Lady Macbeth. The pair were founding members of a year-long collective of young Atlanta actors and writers called The Seedling Project in 2015/16. They are recent transplants to the D.C. area, where Mandi works as Development Manager at Synetic Theater. She made her onstage/onscreen Synetic debut in their virtual production of "The Decameron" in the summer of 2020. In her free time, Mandi enjoys watching horror films and nerding out about Shakespeare.