Pengtao "Mac" Teng earned his B.S.E. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was the business director for the Virginia Environmental Law Journal. While at UVA, he worked as a law clerk at the Commonwealth Attorney's office in Charlottesville and the U.S. Attorney's office for the Middle District of Florida. He was also a Cowan Fellow in the Human Rights Study Project.

Prior to law school, Mac worked as a technology analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he helped develop a risk and margin calculation platform used by the prime brokerage and asset management businesses.