Terry McGinnis earned her BS in Elementary Education with a concentration in Mathematics from Iowa State University. She has taught middle and elementary school mathematics, developed, and implemented the curriculum used with her students. She has been involved in college mathematics publishing for over twenty years, working with a variety of authors on textbooks in both precalculus and developmental mathematics.

After working behind the scenes on many of the Lial/Hornsby textbooks and supplements for over 10 years, McGinnis joined John Hornsby and Margaret Lial in 2002 as a coauthor of their developmental mathematics series.