[4][5] Ivy graduated from the University of Michigan in 1991 and completed a master's degree in 1992 at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
[2] Her dissertation, Determining Maintenance and Replacement Policies for a Multi-State Deteriorating Process with Probabilistic Monitoring, was supervised by Stephen M.
[6] She worked as a faculty member in the School of Business at the University of Michigan from 1998 to 2007 before moving to North Carolina State University,[2][6] where she was a professor of industrial and systems engineering and a Fitts Faculty Fellow in Health Systems Engineering.
[6] In 2016, INFORMS gave Ivy their Moving Spirit Award for her work with their Minority Issues Forum.
[2] In 2022 she was named a Fellow of INFORMS, "for her service and significant contributions in healthcare and hunger relief, which have advanced the stature and recognition of the OR/MS profession, making it more inclusive for underrepresented members".