About Me #

Hi, I'm Mark and I'm a baker. I also write things and I talk a whole bunch too.

Things I'm doing #

• My podcast, Rise Up! The Baker Podcast has been going since 2018. I have conversations with professional bakers and bakery owners from around the world.

• I founded an online community for professional bakers and bakery owners in 2020, called Bakers4Bakers

• In 2024, I co-founded a workshop with the Bread Bakers Guild of America called The Bakery Leadership Circle, where a small cohort of bakery owners and leaders work together to tackle their biggest business decisions and leadership challenges.

• I'm currently looking for part-time work in my new hometown of Victoria, BC. Something where I can help people directly; there is such a thing as too much Zoom.

Things I've done #

If you're inclined to dig through my writing archives you'll uncover a few layers of past projects and adventures. Some work highlights from front to back:

• I was a coach at Seth Godin's altMBA program and head coach of Akimbo's Story Skills Workshop from 2017 through 2022.

• My friend Bernadette Jiwa and I launched the Right Company in 2018 and I was the Chief Community Advocate there until the end of 2021.

• I've run a few bakeries. Cindy and I opened Orange Boot Bakery in 2011 and ran it for five years. There was a proto-Orange Boot, run out of my garage, starting around 2008. And there was a post-Orange Boot, called (creatively) The Backyard Bakery, back in the garage, after we closed Orange Boot in 2015.

• And before all of that, I had a career in Telecom from 1989 - 2010. I tried to get folks turned on to blogging early on, starting a small local community blog and an example business blog. Some of those posts are here too.

But outside of all the projects and businesses and community building and coaching work, I keep coming back to writing about three things: connection, community and collaboration. As in, working together, human to human, to make our lives inwardly rich and our world healthy and vibrant.

About this website #

This is where all my writing goes. From at least five disparate blogs and websites going back to 2006. I have a website problem, you see. I start them, and fill them up, then abandon them for a new project. But in the spring of 2023 I finally pulled them all into one spot. Blogs you've never heard of, like:

• My Voice is in here somewhere, my first wordpress blog from 2006 - 2010 or so, including two awesome family vacation memoirs and my formative baking education at the San Francisco Baking Institute
• Orange Boot Bakery (at home edition), the first iteration of our bakery
• Orange Boot Bakery, five years of mayhem an awesomeness on Gordon Road, Regina.
• The Backyard Bakery, my return to the brick oven and a more connective, personal baking experience
• Ready With Shoes On, a travel blog with field updates from a three month trip to Europe

And more recent posts from my coaching, storytelling and community-building work.

Onward!

Contact #

I've got email! Send me a note at mark@madbaker.com