Management Profile

Mark has been involved with start-ups and turn-around projects in small and medium sized companies for nearly 15 years. As a Center Director in the early days of expansion for Sylvan Learning Systems, Mark helped retool the most profitable centers in the country for renewed growth leveraging Internet and contact center technology. At JM&A Group, Mark dramatically expanded Training and Development products for that company’s new consulting division. He was the lead designer and developer of that team’s elearning pilot. Barr Systems offered Mark the opportunity to assemble a rapid response team of analysts, developers, engineers, and project managers to develop custom solutions for financial services and health care customers in the growing output management industry. At Bridgevine, Mark has been involved in building strong support infrastructure throughout the organization, and manages the teams in Sales Support, Customer Service, Sales Operations, Technical Support, User Acceptance Testing, and the Project Management Office. These teams ensure that Bridgevine’s customers, partners, and vendors enjoy the best service available anywhere in our system.

The many different responsibilities that Mark has held at Bridgevine, has afforded him a very unique perspective of the company. “I started as a sales director for our commercial division at the Orlando office. I was able to grow that team and it’s mission aggressively and get more involved in virtually all areas of operations. Now I help support the Sales Operations team, our Technical Support Department, the UAT group and our Project Management Office. My day to day responsibilities bring me into projects with Product, Development, QA, Marketing, virtually all areas of our company”.

Mark loves working at Bridgevine and has even coined a phrase that describes his feelings. “I have a saying, “Relentless Forward Progress,” that I find intimately connected to all of my teams at Bridgevine. We’ve developed exceptional teams who don’t settle for less than their best efforts at achieving their goals. Finding new ways of exploiting the technology to meet our business goals offers new challenges every morning. Whether we’re changing a GUI to improve efficiency and save money in Operations, or to leverage a new widget to offer a winning online experience for customers, the platform evolves constantly and we always try to leverage that spirit of innovation.”

“Bridgevine is a cool company with an outstanding team of people helping build a community of websites to help customers find the services that can make their lives more fun! We have AOL pedigree here, we have consulting pedigree, and we have leadership in all areas. We have a collection of amazing people to be in such a young business with such a clear idea of how they’re going to do business is remarkable.”

Mark has a slightly different view as to why the Bridgevine has become so successful. “We have always found ways to stay ahead and offer customers what they want to buy. Sometimes we have to wait for technology to catch up with how we want to present those opportunities. Bridgevine is always about working hard to keep our technology ahead of the customer experience. We definitely want to lead, not follow.”

Mark is a frustrated wood worker and has the nail gun scars to prove it. “I want to build furniture but I don’t have the time anymore. So I’ve turned in inward these days—literally—I turn pens and bowls on a lathe and I also build dog beds.” And with eight dogs that he shares with his wife, he needs a lot of beds.