Mark is an admitted attorney (South Africa) with over 13 years of start-up, in-house legal, and research experience gained through leading local and international organizations including Uber, Takealot, Media24, the HSRC, simple.Capital(), and the Global Center on AI Governance (GCG).
From 2019 - 2024, Mark ran his own legal and research consultancy, .athinktank, which undertook law-focused artificial intelligence research and advisory projects for a number of the forename organizations. Mark’s legal areas of expertise include contracts, commercial law, e-commerce & technology, start-ups, and compliance. Mark currently serves as Director: Legal & Operations at GCG.
Mark holds degrees in arts (history and sociology) and law, both from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Mark is currently reading for his PhD in Jurisprudence at UCT, where his research focuses on the moral implications of artificial intelligence, particularly its effect on human autonomy and independent decision-making.
Mark is a co-author of Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2021), the first major investigation of the real and potential human rights implications of the 4IR in South Africa.