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Mark was born on September 10, 1954 in New York City. His father, Leonard, was an attorney and his mother, Marjory, was a chemist before becoming a full time homemaker. Mark grew up in Yonkers with his two siblings, Margaret and Charlie. After nine years at P.S. # 8 in Yonkers, Mark attended boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire starting in the ninth grade. Finishing a year early in 1971, Mark then lived in Africa for the better part of a year. At age seventeen he managed components of an integrated poultry farm in Kitwe, Zambia. First he ran the butchery, next the broiler grow out operation, and finally the hatchery.
In 1972 Mark returned to the United States and started college. While at Yale, Mark studied history and ran on the cross country and track teams. The high point of his athletic career came in April 1975 when Mark ran the Boston Marathon in the time of 2:32:28, a more than respectable finish then or now. The next day Mark’s coach asked him to jump into the JV 3 mile against Harvard. He did and won the race.
Immediately after graduation, Mark joined the accounting firm Arthur Andersen & Co. as an auditor in the New York office. He went to night school at the NYU Business School, earning a MS degree in accounting and becoming a CPA. After six years of working on the audits of some of the largest corporations in the world, Mark left Andersen and joined the Reagan administration.
Mark had the distinct honor of serving under President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese
Mark spent six years in the Reagan administration, with his time more or less equally divided between the United States Information Agency and the Department of Justice. At USIA Mark served as an assistant director of the agency and worked on sensitive public diplomacy projects associated with the deployment of Intermediate Nuclear Forces in Europe and the launch of Radio Marti, surrogate radio broadcasting to Cuba. At DOJ Mark was first a special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese III, advising Meese on management and budget issues relating to the department. In the summer of 1986 he moved to the INS, serving initially as the third ranking official and subsequently as deputy commissioner of immigration, the chief operating officer of the agency. At the INS Mark supervised the Border Patrol and inspectors at the ports of entry, and oversaw implementation of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
Mark in Ephesus with his children Leonard Bahadir and Emma Pinar shortly after their adoption in Turkey in 1992.
After leaving government in July 1988 Mark joined American National Can, at the time the world’s largest packaging company. Shortly after he joined the company it was acquired by Pechiney, which was then the largest aluminum producer in Europe. Over a span of ten years at American National/Pechiney Mark was plant manager of the company’s unionized, continuous operation beverage can factory on the south side of Chicago; managing director of the can manufacturing subsidiary in Turkey; vice president of the glass container division based in Indiana; and finally vice president and then senior vice president of Pechiney in Paris. Mark left Pechiney in the fall of 1998, moving to Dallas to join LSG SkyChefs, the world’s largest airline catering company. At SkyChefs he joined the business as a vice president and later became Group Vice President Finance.
In 2001 Mark returned to Washington to join the administration of George W. Bush. Initially at the Office of Management & Budget, Mark was the controller and then deputy director for management. As deputy director Mark was a member of the small working group which developed the proposal put forth by the president in June 2002 to create the Department of Homeland Security. In January 2003 the president nominated Mark to be the 46th Commissioner of Internal Revenue. He served as IRS Commissioner from May 2003 through May 2007. Under Mark the agency achieved record service and enforcement results.
Mark and Oliver with three of Oliver’s 1st grade classmates on a field trip to a farm in Alabama.
In May 2007 Mark became President and CEO of the American Red Cross. In his brief tenure Mark strengthened relations with the Pentagon—which had atrophied following Vietnam—and took the decision to combat Johnson & Johnson when the company sought to limit the nation’s leading charity in its use of the red cross as its trademark. The board of governors asked Mark to resign after just six months on the job as the result of an inappropriate personal relationship with a distant subordinate.
During 2008 Mark worked with Dynamis, a healthcare consulting firm which was attempting to establish primary care clinics and nursing academies in the lower ninth and other communities in New Orleans then recovering from Hurricane Katrina. In January 2009 Mark moved to Indianapolis and joined the cabinet of his former boss at OMB, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. Mark became the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Administration and in 2010 the commissioner of the Department of Workforce Development (DWD), the agency which oversaw the state’s unemployment insurance, workforce training and adult education programs. While at DWD he implemented first in the nation drug testing for recipients of federal dollars for third party training programs; launched a program helping qualifying offenders secure employment upon release from the Indiana prison system; and worked with legislators to enact legislation restoring solvency to the Indiana unemployment insurance trust fund.
Mark with his daughter Amrong at his swearing-in ceremony as IRS Commissioner in 2003.
Mark became the Vice Chairman of alliantgroup, LP in July 2009, converting to fulltime status in 2012 when he left Indiana state government. alliantgroup is a leading provider of specialty tax services for small and medium-sized businesses. It is based in Houston and has about 600 employees. As Vice Chairman Mark provides counsel to senior management on a variety of issues and works with local and regional CPA firms around the country to enable businesses to claim tax benefits to which they are fully entitled but often overlook.
Mark’s mother and brother live in the Chicago area. He has three grown children who reside in northern Virginia. Mark’s marriage ended in divorce in 2008. He currently lives on the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, where his first grade son attends public school and plays soccer and baseball.