TESTIMONIALS

Mark Brand

Mark Brand is a chef, social impact entrepreneur, and relentless optimist working at the collision of food, community, and impact. As the founder of Upward Mobility kitchens in Vancouver and Halifax, his teams serve over 6000 scratch-made meals every single day—and have delivered more than 5.5 million meals to those who need them most. His work proves that dignity, opportunity, and true collaboration, changes lives.

With a dozen brick-and-mortar businesses, a multinational charity, and global partnerships under his belt, Brand builds models that center food security, poverty reduction, and cross-sector collaboration. From the Downtown Eastside to the halls of Stanford, where he’s a fellow and served as professor of innovation and design thinking—he teaches that lasting change starts with listening, and scales with love.

Mark’s work spans the world: from serving as Executive Chef for the American Refugee Committee, to collaborating on Pope Francis’s Climate Challenge, to being named Entrepreneur in Residence for the City of Sydney Australia.

He’s been awarded Canada’s Golden Jubilee Medal and King Charles III’s Coronation Medal for his service to country and community, but he'd tell you the real awards are in every meal served and every life impacted.

He’s also the host of “BETTER with Mark Brand,” Canada’s only iHeart Original podcast, distributed across Rogers and Bell Media, where he amplifies stories of transformation and tools for action, not just talk.

At the heart of everything is his belief in radical collaboration: that there’s no "us and them"—only us.

SPEAKING TOPICS

Business with a Conscience

Mark Brand believes that good business doesn’t have to come at the cost of doing good. Discussing the tenants of blending corporate and community leadership, Mark draws on his own decades-long experience of successful social entrepreneurship to guide and encourage audiences in their own endeavours. Fully customizable, Mark can discuss his own experience (and lessons learned); the best practices for employing people who traditionally have had barriers to employment; mentorship; the importance of leverage and partnerships; thinking outside the box; and sticking to your philosophies during tough economic times.

A Better Life

Mark Brand’s “A Better Life Foundation” works to facilitate empowerment and a sense of wellbeing for those who struggle with addictions and mental illness issues by providing food security, education, and employment training. Speaking on the organization’s conception to its present-day incarnation, Mark stresses the importance of community involvement to create a meaningful life, as well as the current and future state of non-profits in Canada and beyond.

Building Better Communities

Successful and vibrant communities are built with real inclusion.  Mark Brand works in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a community long recognized as being in flux.  The space of  one city block separates million dollar condos and 8×10-single-room occupancy’s dedicated as housing for the mentally ill and addicted.

Brand’s work in the DTES encompasses food security, training, employment, and strategic partnerships with developers and social enterprises alike.  He works to change  policy municipally–and perception nationally–in an effort to help create and build better communities that are rich, inclusive, and wonderful places in which to live and work, and  where residents  look after one another.

He speaks on this topic with the passion that translates to all levels of business and society, regardless of color, creed, or financial status.