While in high school, she studied art under Kay Crimp, and in her junior year took her first jewelry class.

[11] After high school, Worden enrolled in a degree program at Central Washington, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977.

[1][12] There she studied with Ken Cory, who taught her jewelry fundamentals and encouraged her to develop her own personal artistic style.

[11] By the late 1990s, she won national notoriety for her distinctive style that merged personal and political themes.

[16][18][19] In 2014 the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) acquired her necklace "The Family Reunion 2012.

The show was then presented at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University from November 2009 to January 2010.