Biography
Mark Laabs is an entrepreneur who is a founder, advisor, and/or builder of a wide range of organizations which seek to address critical social and environmental problems on five continents. Mark, an ocular melanoma survivor, founded the RCRF to accelerate innovation in rare cancer research by creating shared infrastructure that drives scale and catalyzes research in these understudied and underserved areas. One of its key initiatives, www.pattern.org, enables patient-powered engagement with cancer research through the donation of fresh tissue vital to create disease models necessary to more fully understand each cancer and to identify potential new treatments. Mark is also focused on enabling precision medicine and trial enrollment opportunities for rare cancer patients regardless of location. Mark serves as Managing Partner of Modern Energy Group, with businesses focused on energy efficiency and resources in the United States and Brazil. Previously, he was COO of Soligent Holdings Inc., helped build and later sell Climate Bridge, a clean energy finance company, and was a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Mark graduated as a Robertson Scholar from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University with a dual degree in International Studies and the Dynamics of Social Change