Maria was born in Tokyo, Japan, daughter of Lutheran missionaries. She spent her childhood growing up in Japan, attending Japanese public schools through the eighth grade. As a result, she is bilingual and bicultural, and has used her language and cultural skills in a variety of ways through the years.

After finishing high school at Canadian Academy in Kobe, Japan, she moved to the United States for college. She graduated from Yale College, and later attended seminary and received her Masters of Divinity from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1984.