Biography
Mark was born in Philadelphia Pa. and has lived in the Washington DC metropolitan area since grade school. He graduated from Bishop McNamara high school in Forestville Maryland (1978) and earned his Bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland (College Park) in 1982. During his sophomore year at the University of Maryland he joined the United States Marine Corps and served in the reserves until 1986. Mark started his career by selling commercial real estate as a licensed agent in Washington DC., Maryland and Virginia. Mark then accepted a position teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade at Assumption Catholic School in Washington DC. It is here that he discovered his love of teaching.
Mark became interested in the Information Technology field in the
mid 1980s. He went back to School and earned an A.A. degree in
Computer Management from Prince Georges Community College in 1985
and began working for various firms and government agencies as a
contractor including the Department of Transportation, The
Department of Labor, The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, The
United States Mint, The United States Secret Service, The Financial
Management Service and The Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Mark moved to Northern Virginia and was employed part-time as a
Lecturer at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) in 1987.
In 1990 Mark earned an A.A.S. degree from Northern Virginia
Community College (NVCC) in Computer Programming. In 1995-1996 he
returned to school for automotive technology classes and passed one
of the ASE exams to become a certified automotive mechanic. Later
Mark enrolled in networking classes at the local Cisco Network
Academy. He passed the CCNA exam in 2001. Mark took additional
classes and became a Cisco Academy Instructor (CCAI) in 2002. Mark
has taught a number of the CISCO classes for NVCC.
In the late 1990's Mark and several associates started several
Information Technology (IT) companies. One of these companies won
several contracts with the Treasury department and worked on
solutions for Year 2000 (Y2K) processing. Mark was Vice President
and Investment manager for each of the firms. Mark later sold his
equity in three smaller organizations and formed a new corporation.
He is currently the President of Digital Signature Inc. (DSI) where he was
an exclusive subcontractor for Computer Associates Inc. at the
Financial Management Service (on site Hyattsville, Maryland through
the end of 2006) for the US Treasury department. Mark still
does some training and consulting work through DSI and also invests
DSI funds in the capital markets.
Mark completed his M.B.A. from Averett University (Danville VA.) in February of 2005. Mark completed his Doctorate in Business (D.B.A) at NOVA Southeastern University (NSU) with a specialty in Finance in May of 2008. Mark’s dissertation at NSU was on the recognition and mitigation of investment risk. His dissertation title is: The effects of Lifecycle funds on risk, asset allocation and investment choices for federal employees in the Thrift Savings Plan.
During his time in Graduate School Mark became a big believer in the Case Method. He did some consulting work for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Mark designed and presented a course on how to use the case method and then presented, discussed and analyzed cases for a year with SHRM employees. Mark published his own case study (How much Financial Risk should you take?) on asset allocation in September of 2007. He has also published a second case (Ethics or corporate loyalty, Which would you choose?) with several colleagues at NVCC. Mark is currently working on a number of other multidisciplinary case studies for use in the classroom.
Mark started his new career as full time Assistant Professor of Business at NVCC in the fall of 2006. He is currently an Associate Professor at NVCC and also teaches in the graduate and MBA programs at Florida Institute of Technology (in Northern Virginia).