Current position
- Managing Partner, Sole Platform and BDK Consulting
Community Involvement
- Boy Scouts (Committee Chair, former Scoutmaster)
- Galloway School (trustee)
- Piedmont Hospital (board member)
- Divergence Analysis (board member)
- Ellipsis Technology (board member)
- Pace Academy (former board chairman)
- Atlanta Boys & Girls Club (former board member)
Other Hobbies
- gardening, woodworking, camping
Recent Book
- Colossus
Childhood Hero
- Mickey Mantle
What most people don’t know about you?
- How handy I am.
Mark has given so much of himself to community organizations – fund raising, leading executive committees, and being involved with organizations’ members and staff. Probably, no group has benefitted more from his time than Boy Scouts. Mark was a Scoutmaster during the 1980s for Troop 467 in Buckhead when his sons were in Scouting. Ten years later after handing off his Scoutmaster role, the troop needed rebuilding and they called Mark back for his leadership. He led the troop again for over a decade while also chairing numerous other parts within Scouting. During that time, the troop grew almost 10x in size. Mark led with his feet too. He attended almost every monthly campout with the kids, cooking and serving up his “world famous” Peach Cobbler. The scouts adore Mark since he makes them feel that they are his “favorites.” Additionally, his ability to recruit many superb adult volunteers has been equally amazing. For his exceptional impact on Boy Scouts, he has received the highest award given to an adult volunteer from scouting’s national headquarters.
On the professional side, Mark has over three decades experience in growing and leading industrial and telecommunications companies. His career includes 25 years in the wireless sector. Mark has successfully founded several startups in his career and has also acquired a number of companies. Mark co-founded two national wireless companies where he served as CEO. Both companies grew to more than $100 million in revenues and were later sold to Bell Atlantic Corporation (now Verizon.) He also served as President of British Telecom’s pager subsidiary in North America and later founded The Beeper Company, a national company which was sold to Arch Communications Group. He co-founded Friend Technologies in San Francisco, California which was sold to a public technology company in Atlanta, Georgia.
Mark and his wife Marcia have been married for 51 years. They have just returned full-time to Atlanta after living in the San Francisco area for almost 10 years to take care of Marcia’s ailing parents. They also have 3 Eagle Scout sons – Patrick, Steve, and David. The Dunaway family loves to travel together, spending nearly every Thanksgiving for the last 50 years at their favorite vacation spot – Death Valley.
