Mark McBride serves as a Director at Ithaka S+R, where he leads several strategic portfolios focused on some of higher education’s most pressing challenges. His work cuts across the domains of teaching and learning, academic libraries, and the research enterprise, each shaped by the broader question of how institutions can sustain integrity and purpose amid accelerating change.

A seasoned leader and systems thinker, Mark has helped universities and state systems reimagine how they organize, govern, and serve. At Ithaka S+R, he guides a team of researchers and analysts whose work seeks not merely to analyze problems, but to help institutions rediscover coherence, linking organizational strategy with human aspiration. His approach blends evidence with empathy, recognizing that transformation in education is as much cultural as it is structural.

In his work with academic and cultural leaders, Mark invites organizations to orient toward resilience rather than control. He believes the most enduring institutions are those that, in the face of disruption, remember their deeper purpose. To lead through uncertainty, he often says, is not to impose direction but to help others discern their true north, the animating values that keep an organization both grounded and alive.