Mark Edwards

Why you should listen

Raised by a father who focused on giving his kids the privileges he didn't have, Mark Edwards grew up with an awareness of opportunities. After college, he became involved in local anti-poverty work and helped launch a preschool program for homeless children before founding Opportunity Nation, a bipartisan coalition of 300 national nonprofits focused on expanding economic mobility through federal policy reform.

In that work, for which he was named an Ashoka Fellow, Edwards kept hearing different versions of the same story: young people whose lives were derailed by unplanned pregnancy. This inspired him to cofound Upstream USA. The organization works with healthcare organizations to strengthen reproductive care and autonomy by increasing equitable access to a full range of contraceptive options. Edwards is a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation entrepreneur, serves on more than a dozen nonprofit boards and advisory committees and is currently a trustee of the Barr Foundation.