Mario N. Contreras was born in 1951 in the south side of Odessa, Texas (the “original” barrio of Odessa). He grew up in that neighborhood and graduated from Ector High School in 1970. Afterward, Contreras attended Odessa College, Sul Ross State University, and Baylor University before graduating from the University of Texas-Permian Basin in 1974. Contreras briefly joined the Brown Berets of Odessa during the late 1960s. After college, Contreras became the first Mexican American salesman in West Texas for Xerox, where he became a top salesman at a state level. In 1988 Contreras founded his own consulting company, and in 2005 became a board member of the Mexican American Network of Odessa that became the Odessa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.