General: Mark comes from a low-income household, is a native to rural Southwest Michigan and a Greater Kalamazoo resident since 2006 with on and off stints for work and education around the world. He has been married since 2013 and has two young children. He moved to Portage during the Pandemic to be closer to work and childcare after the birth of his second child.

His passion for community service comes from a near death experience as a teenager where he suffered a traumatic brain injury as a passenger in a vehicle on the way to school. He had to relearn how to talk and walk after spending one month in the hospital and four months in a wheelchair healing from seven fractures to his pelvis. The experience made him aptly aware of how little time we have on the planet and the importance of making the most out of everyday to give back to our communities for future generations.

Education: Mark is a first generation college graduate with a degree from WMU, with a BA double major in Organizational Communication as well as International and Comparative Politics, and a minor in Arabic. He also holds a MIDA - Masters in International Development Administration from WMU.

International Experience: He has lived, traveled, worked and/or studied in Egypt, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Netherlands.

Career: Working through high school, upon graduation Mark joined AmeriCorps*NCCC to carry out disaster relief work and recovery in Gulf States post-hurricane Katrina. He has in all spent roughly 16 years with non-profits filling roles like Youth Coordinator, Child Care Worker, House Builder and currently sits on the Board of Directors for El Concilio. He has also been selected to be a member of the Kalamazoo County Climate Action and Climate Justice Plan Advisory Council (What is the Advisory Council? (7:50) link).

By chance in 2015 he and a Peace Corps alumni classmate in the MIDA program, initiated a value added income generation project funded by community donations that took them to Guatemala to teach a rural women’s cooperative how to make wine.

Since 2018 due to federal funding cuts he pivoted from working as a Job Developer for refugee employment, to contracting with various large employers. His last contract was with Stryker which set him down a path working as a Business Analyst with big data. Afterwards he joined Perrigo as a Master Data Specialist before returning to Stryker a year later and is currently a Senior Master Data Specialist.