Ms. Funsch has worked for the Arab Information Center in New York as editor of The Arab World magazine; The Ford Foundation, in its Middle East regional office in Beirut, Lebanon; and as U.S. director of The American Research Center in Egypt, a consortium of major universities and museums.

She lectures extensively throughout Frederick County and beyond. She has taught courses in Middle Eastern and Islamic history at Mount St. Mary's University and, currently, serves as adjunct professor at Hood College and Frederick Community College.

During the course of her career, Ms. Funsch has come to know the Middle East well, touring a wide variety of countries in the region. In 2005, she received a Joseph J. Malone Fellowship from the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations to visit, for the first time, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In March 2006, again as a Malone Fellow, she returned to the Sultanate of Oman after an absence of more than 30 years, observing and recording the sweeping changes that have transformed that once remote and distant land.