Mark has made this transformation over the past 13-plus years at St. Louis-based Maritz, LLC (with a seven-month stint at Centene Corporation thrown in there) in a variety of roles, most recently that of Interactive Designer supporting group incentive and business travel programs – designing promotional and registration web sites, html e-mails, animated “e-cards” and other interactive deliverables, as well as serving as a usability/user experience guru for the Travel business unit’s client-facing and internal interactive offerings.
Mark got his start at Maritz in 1998 as a copywriter, writing primarily for print materials in support of the aforementioned group travel programs. As more and more of the travel business moved to the web and he got involved in writing copy for those projects, he made the transition to the “web team” as a project manager overseeing all aspects of Maritz's client-facing web sites. Throughout this entire time, he took quite a few classes and taught himself the creative end of the web (design and art have always been an interest of mine) in an attempt to forge a new career path. Prior to jumping into his current role full-time, Mark initially did a little bit of creative work for his department when the other web designers were overloaded (and when his workload allowed). When a full-time position eventually opened up, it was a natural segue for his career.
Up until October, 2006, Mark also dabbled part-time in his former first love
of radio, working weekend shifts as an on-air personality at K-HITS 96.3
in St. Louis. He also did production work for commercial spots that aired
on K-HITS as well as Emmis Communications' other stations in the market:
105.7 The Point, KSHE 95, KFTK 97.1 and Red @ 104.1. Broadcasting was
Mark's educational focus in high school and college, and he gained extensive
full-time experience working in radio in a variety of capacities (on-air,
commercial copywriting and production, news) in Kirksville, MO and Quincy,
IL prior to moving back to his hometown of St. Louis. While currently retired
from the radio business, Mark is still eager to provide voice-over services for any type of project; he has handled a variety of such projects for Maritz, including the voice-over for the corporate video for Maritz-based Buy Rewards Direct, while he is also the "on-hold" voice for St. Louis-based companies St. Albans Promotions and On The Edge.