BuildUP
Deep Dives
Deep Dives are free site visits to selected nonprofit organizations that serve critical socioeconomic needs in Alabama. The CEO describes the work of the organization, its history, challenges, and needs. A tour of the facility provides a deeper understanding. Participants may optionally use a provided checklist to make observations and discuss what they observed and learned. Recommendations can be sent to the CEO. This Deep Dive is limited to 10 participants. Please send an email to our Events Chair to reserve your seat and you will receive a confirmation and checklist by reply email: Email John Whitman.
The Organization
Build UP is the nation’s first and only workforce development model that provides low-income youth with career-ready skills through paid apprenticeships with industry-aligned secondary and early-postsecondary academic coursework, leading them to become educated, credentialed, and empowered civic leaders, workers, homeowners and landlords. It's an anti-gentrification revitalization model that comprehensively addresses poverty and urban blight by recruiting local youth to enroll to solve local problems. Build UP-Ensley, the program's pilot school, launched in the Fall of 2018 with 25 youth from Western Birmingham attending school and apprenticeships from 8am-5pm daily, receiving high quality instruction aligned with paid work rebuilding homes in the Ensley neighborhood.
The CEO
Dr. Mark W. C. Martin recently returned home to Alabama after nearly 15 years away to launch Build Urban Prosperity (Build UP). He recently graduated from Harvard’s Doctor of Education Leadership program where he worked with Jobs For the Future and the Alabama State Department of Education on education-to-career transitions and workforce readiness. Mark previously served as the School Director at Langston Hughes Academy, a preK-8 public charter school he co-founded in 2007. Under his leadership, the school achieved six consecutive years of academic growth, piloted the state’s “Diverse Delivery” early childhood education initiative, and built New Orleans’ first post-Katrina school facility, a $32MM project. He was a founding Board Member of THRIVE, Louisiana’s first public urban residential school, which posted the highest one-year academic gains in state history. Investing 15+ years educating children in poverty, Mark began his career with Teach For America in Atlanta’s Woodson Elementary, where he was honored as the Employee of the Year and as West Atlanta’s Cub Scouter of the Year, after founding Troop 351. Mark has served on Advisory Boards for the University of Alabama’s Blackburn Institute, University of New Orleans College of Education, and Christian Active Parenting. He has led and served on mission trips to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico; Swaziland, Africa; and Katrina Relief in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mark graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Finance from the University of Alabama and earned an MBA from the University of Georgia. Mark and his wife Tiffany have two children, Marilee and Rhett.