Mark was born in Ohio on an Air Force base, as his father was in the military. His family moved to Los Gatos when he was four. Mark grew up riding skateboards and playing music in a punk-band, and he has enjoyed a bit more of the Silicon Valley’s counter culture. He is married with three children and two dogs.  His wife is a stay-at-home mom, and he works doing corporate finance for a major high-tech company in the Silicon Valley. He is very good with his hands and he has performed many well executed renovations of his home. Mark is an intelligent guy with strong opinions. He has a direct way of speaking; this combined with a brittle, loud voice can make him come across as foreboding, but his voice and characteristics stand in contrast to his thoughtful words and insightfulness.

I grew up an artist, and I grew up with a real F-U attitude—probably straight from the womb. To me up was always down and down was always up, and right was always wrong and wrong was always right. I lived in this opposite world, this chaos that I was very comfortable with and I still am to a certain extent, although I think I’ve matured a bit. To be an artist and then to one day decide you’re going to become a business man of corporate finance, managing very large portfolios and pools of money was not something I ever anticipated. To me it is always very interesting to go in [to work], cause I know I’m very different than the people I work with, and I don’t think there are very many people like me in the corporate finance world. So, I am always a little bit on the outside looking in. Professionally it is very limiting. I have a tendency to see things differently than the people I work with.

Hey, I can be very pig headed and stubborn. Sometimes I don’t ask “Hey is it okay for me to do this,” I just do it. Me, I just throw everything out there and I look and see how the pieces fall and start visualizing how those pieces go together, where he [his boss] may go through a very systematic approach or a process of elimination or rational reasoning. To get a solution I will take a more chaotic approach of figuring it out, which is how I’ve done my house, how I’ve done my entire life. This can be very frustrating to him, very frustrating, because he doesn’t understand it. He sees it as a lack of discipline, a lack of organization, a lack of attention to detail, and it’s not that at all, it is just a different process. It’s just a different way of thinking period.

When asked about his parents

My dad and I have a very interesting relationship, and it’s not necessarily healthy all the time. I think that he respects me. I think that he believes that I am probably doing good work, but we’ve had a very, kind of volatile relationship—um, since childhood. We’re not one of those touchy-feely families. Were very cold and waspy type, no hugging, no “I love yous.” I don’t think my parents ever told me they loved me, and I don’t think I’ve ever told them I loved them— growing up. I knew they did though. It was always known but you never said it. That was something uncomfortable and uncalled for. We didn’t hug. I tell my kids I love them every day, as many times as I can. That’s one thing that my wife said, “You’re going to change,” and “You’re going to say this,” and “You’re going to hear it,” and it was good for me to hear it. We can’t say it enough to each other in this house. We’re very huggy and touchy and we’re very affectionate, which is very good.

Contributed by James Brusseau