Board Member

Mark Howard Chichester leads the Aegis Institute. Prior to assuming this role within The Aegis Group, Mark was a co-founder, president, and vice chair of the board of Atlas Research, an award-winning federal healthcare innovation and transformation company that was acquired by Customer Value Partners, Inc. in 2021. 

Before co-founding Atlas in 2008, Mark served as a Vice President at The Aspen Institute and as Executive Director of Aspen's Socrates Society. During his tenure there he developed and oversaw a portfolio of programs and seminars on contemporary leadership issues, including bioethics and health care, climate change and energy sustainability, international security, media, religion, leadership, democracy, technology, and innovation. He launched Aspen’s Socrates Salon Series, inaugurated in Silicon Valley in 2008, and worked with senior officials who served in the Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan administrations. 

Mark served on the executive staff of former Congressman Bill Gray at UNCF, where he directed the Division of Policy Studies and Research and oversaw the Institute for International Public Policy and the Center for Assessment, Planning and Accountability. Prior to his tenure at UNCF, he worked on the Policy Coordination Staff in the Office of the Director General at the U.S. Department of State.

Mark has served on the boards of the National Education Association (NEA) Foundation (including a stint as Chairman) and the Forum on Education Abroad, and he is currently a trustee of The George Washington University, where he serves on the Executive Committee.  In addition to his board service, he has been a member of the U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Eisenhower National Security Series Working Group; a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he co-chaired the Washington Term Member Advisory Committee; and an appointee to the U.S. Trade Representative's Trade Advisory Committee on Africa.

Mark holds degrees in business and law from The George Washington University, where he received The George Washington Award, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Medal for Outstanding Contributions in Human Rights, the Baer Leadership Award, and was inducted into George Washington Circle of the Omicron Delta Kappa national leadership honor society.  He held a Shapiro Fellowship in the Republic of Korea and was an Executive Seminarian of the Aspen Institute.

Mark is a fourth-generation native of Washington, DC, where he attended DC Public Schools and Sidwell Friends School.