McLeod earned her Ph.D. in 2007 from Australian National University. Her dissertation, Methods in Asymptotic Combinatorics, was supervised by
Brendan McKay.[4]
She is one of the cofounders of Maths Craft New Zealand, a project to popularise mathematics using crafts such as
crochet and
origami.[5][6][7]
In 2019, McLeod and fellow Canterbury mathematician Phil Wilson won the
Cranwell Medal for Science Communication from the
New Zealand Association of Scientists for their work on Maths Craft.[8] McLeod's advocacy for creative practice within science and research saw her profiled in a Nature careers article in 2021.[9]