Mark spent 15 years in managerial roles in the paper, printing and engineering industries.  In 1994 he initiated the RSA Tomorrow’s Company Inquiry, a three-year investigation into the future role of business conducted by a team of business leaders. Building on this work Mark went on to found Tomorrow’s Company to inspire and enable business to be a force for good in society.  The recommendations made by the Tomorrow’s Company Inquiry laid the foundations for the “enlightened shareholder value” approach in the redefinition of the directors’ duties in the 2006 Companies Act. The report was the first to make the case that purpose, values and relationships – and not the narrow pursuit of financial objectives – lay at the heart of sustainable business success, a case that is now widely acknowledged across the business and investment world. 

In recent years he has concentrated on the issue of board and investor responsibilities for stewardship., co-authoring a report with the Institute for Family Business on Family Business Stewardship. He led the formation and work of the UK’s Investor Stewardship Working Party which in 2012 launched the 2020 Stewardship report (and culminated in the 2018 Better Stewardship report). This work was the catalyst for the creation in the UK of the world’s first Stewardship Code, an innovation now repeated around the world. In 2018 Mark was appointed the sole independent member on the Wates Committee, set up by the UK government to develop corporate governance principles for privately owned businesses. 

In 2013 he initiated a new project entitled Tomorrow’s Business Forms, and through this Tomorrow’s Company developed the idea of a ‘Trust Test’. The idea of a standard set of requirements, which private sector organisations can meet to demonstrate trustworthiness to the public sector was then developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and launched as British Standard 95009 in 2019. It is intended for use as a framework which helps those in the procurement process to more accurately assess the culture and character of organisations tendering for and procuring contracts.

Between 1985 and 1989 Mark was a Kent County Councillor. In 2018 he was invited to become a member and later Deputy Chair of the Public Service Reform Commission initiated in 2018 by the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The Commission has been which is focusing on the improvement of health and social care in the region. Mark has served in advisory capacities for the British Airways, BT, Camelot, Novo Nordisk and Walgreens Boots Alliance. He is author or co-author of many Tomorrow’s Company publications and of three books. Most recently he is co-author, with Singapore’s Ong Boon Hwee, of ‘Entrusted – Stewardship for Responsible Wealth Creation published in 2020, and a Financial Times Book of the Month. In 2019 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of East Anglia.