Dr. Mark W. C. Martin returned home to Alabama after nearly 15 years away to launch Build Urban Prosperity. Build UP, featured on NBC’s TODAY Show, is the Nation’s first workforce development High School to comprehensively addresses poverty and urban blight, by empowering Birmingham youth to become educated, career-ready homeowners and contributing citizens. Prior to Build UP, Mark graduated Harvard’s Doctor of Education Leadership program where he worked with JFF (Jobs For the Future) and multiple state education agencies on education-to-career transitions and workforce readiness.

 

Mark previously co-founded two successful charter schools in Louisiana. Under his leadership, Langston Hughes Academy achieved six straight years of academic growth and built New Orleans’s first post- Katrina school facility, a 32-million-dollar project. As a founding Board Member of THRIVE, Louisiana’s first urban boarding school, students made the largest academic gains in state history.

 

Since returning to Alabama, Mark was awarded the prestigious Vulcans Community “Newcomer” award and named one of Birmingham Business Journal’s Top 40 under 40.

 

Mark graduated with a B.S. in Finance from the University of Alabama and an MBA from the University of Georgia. Mark and his wife Tiffany have two children, Marilee and Rhett.

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Email: Mark@buildup.work