After graduation, Mahler taught at the University of Vermont from 1992 to 1997 in the Anthropology department, and Florida International University from 1997 where she continues to teach courses in the interdisciplinary department of Global and Sociocultural Studies.
Starting in 2008 she has dedicated herself wholly to studying the wide-ranging interdisciplinary literatures on the brain and how infants and children learn in general, and how they learn culture in particular.