On a barstool somewhere in Wisconsin an old dairy farmer turned to Mark and said, "no wonder you ain't happy son.  You moved to Chicago and you work in a company that makes fake cheese!" Those profound words spurred Mark's departure from a career developing fat substitutes at Kraft Foods to a year of service with AmeriCorps and the Medically Underserved of Utah.

While running a childhood immunization program in rural Utah, mark enjoyed the challenge of discussing vaccines with Navajo elders, undocumented farm workers and the occasional dad passing through the grocery store with a shotgun.  After finishing AmeriCorps, Mark enrolled at the Medical College of Wisconsin and discovered family medicine.

He graduated from the Swedish Family Medicine residency in 2004 and shortly thereafter began working with Doctors Without Borders setting up malaria, HIV, TB clinics in Myanmar.  Mark began as faculty in 2007. His clinical interests are tropical medicine, political advocacy, cross-cultural communication, and sports medicine.  Away from the hospital, he enjoys cycling, skiing, kayaking, and soccer as ways to compensate for his over-indulgence of unprocessed, hand-made cheese.