Dr. Jody Carrington
Renowned Psychologist | Human Connection Expert | Bestselling Author
Book Mark Brand, Community Building Speaker
About This Speaker
Mark Brand is a chef, social impact entrepreneur, and relentless optimist. He works at the collision of food, community, and impact. As the founder of UPWARD KITCHENS in Vancouver and Halifax, his teams serve over 6,500 scratch-made meals every single day. They have delivered more than 6.5 million meals to those who need them most. His work proves that dignity, opportunity, and true collaboration change lives.
Brand has built a dozen brick-and-mortar businesses, a multinational charity, and global partnerships. Through them, he builds models that centre 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. He has served as Executive Chef for the American Refugee Committee, collaborated on Pope Francis’s Climate Challenge, and been 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. There, 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.
Speaker Fee: $10,000 - $15,000
Contact an agent to get Mark's availability and ratesSpeaking Topics: Mark Brand
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 endeavors. 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.
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.
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 a passion that translates to all levels of business and society, regardless of colour, creed, or financial status.
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 a passion that translates to all levels of business and society, regardless of colour, creed, or financial status.
A Better Life
Mark Brand’s “A Better Life Foundation” works to facilitate empowerment and a sense of well-being 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.
I’m also a fully certified Integral Facilitator and Moderator if teams need to get unstuck or to workshop, it’s a favorite skillset and I use design thinking methodologies to land on real tangible takeaways.
Additionally, if clients are on the fence, I’m best “In The Room” and happy to take zooms/calls to talk through with potentials.
All of the engagements earnings go back to our sister company Upward Events which moves profits back to A Better Life Foundation and feeds folks, predominantly women and children fleeing violence, here in Canada. We don’t just preach triple bottom lines, we enact them in each and every engagement.
I’m also a fully certified Integral Facilitator and Moderator if teams need to get unstuck or to workshop, it’s a favorite skillset and I use design thinking methodologies to land on real tangible takeaways.
Additionally, if clients are on the fence, I’m best “In The Room” and happy to take zooms/calls to talk through with potentials.
All of the engagements earnings go back to our sister company Upward Events which moves profits back to A Better Life Foundation and feeds folks, predominantly women and children fleeing violence, here in Canada. We don’t just preach triple bottom lines, we enact them in each and every engagement.
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