Umland did undergraduate studies at the
University of California at Santa Cruz in
Santa Cruz, California. In 1996, she was awarded a
Ph.D. in mathematics by the
University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation, entitled "The Mod-2 Cohomology of the Lyons Group", was supervised by Stephen D. Smith. In 1996, Umland began teaching in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the
University of New Mexico (UNM). She joined the tenure stream faculty in 2002 and was later promoted to associate professor. At New Mexico, Umland taught a wide variety of mathematics courses, ranging from intermediate algebra to
measure theory, as well as courses in mathematics education. She supervised 3 doctoral dissertations and several master's dissertations. After being invited to visit the Vermont Mathematics Initiative by Dr.
Ken Gross, Umland was set out to improve K–12 teaching and learning. At UNM, Umland built on her Vermont Mathematics Initiative experience to improve children's learning and achievement. She was program director of La Meta, which was a partnership between the university, Central New Mexico Community College and five New Mexico public school districts. After initially offering mid-grade teachers of mathematics a chance to earn mathematics credit, beginning in 2007, mathematics educators, mathematicians, mentors, and content coaches from the partnership visiting mid-grade classrooms. Umland worked on an
National Science Foundation-funded project to evaluate the impact of Math Teachers' Circles on teachers of middle school mathematics. The circles bring together mathematicians and K–12 mathematics teachers. She and her collaborators reported on the effectiveness of these circles, as well as their history, in the
Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Umland left UNM in 2016 to work full time as vice president for content development at Illustrative Mathematics (IM), a nonprofit company she co-founded with
William McCallum to develop and deliver mathematics content for K-12 teachers. She became chief product officer in July 2019. In June of 2020, Umland was appointed as president of IM. ==Recognition==