Mark Safford joined the Futures Strategy Group as an Associate in 2005, after a distinguished career in the federal government. Mark was a senior consultant on FSG’s interagency global affairs engagement known as Project Horizon, in which he played a leading role in developing scenarios, facilitating workshops, and synthesizing the results. He has also worked on scenario engagements with the Coast Guard, NASA and FEMA for FSG.

For nearly 30 years, Mark held responsible strategic planning and analysis positions within the federal government. Most recently at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Volpe Center in Cambridge, MA, he worked on projects that focused on exploring the future of transportation via travel demand forecasts, analyzing major trends and their impacts on future transportation markets, and on detailed scenario-based planning exercises for DOT, NASA, the FAA, and the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO), a multi-agency effort to create the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS).

Prior to this, Mark served at the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer, and as a program analyst at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). Mark holds a B.A., summa cum laude, with Departmental Honors, in History from Gettysburg College, where he was also Phi Beta Kappa and a National Merit Scholar; an M.A. in English History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.