Pursuing Purpose & Service with Mark Voss
Passion, service, community, and curiosity are the threads that weave the story of Mark Voss. Mark is a consummate educator, farmer, and real estate professional residing in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the founder of Voss Organics and is a Latitude Change Agent.
Like many young people, curiosity and the longing for adventure first lured Mark to venture far and wide from his humble youth in the Midwest. From paradigm-shifting lessons during a Peace Corps service in Africa, a pilgrimage to Masanobu Fukuoka’s farm while teaching English in Japan, and immersion into the field of biodynamic agriculture while starting a 60-family CSA farm, it is evident from this story that Mark has embodied the experiences and lessons to become a wise teacher himself.
Mark lives and breathes community. His urban farm produces seed starts for his business Voss Organics, which serves the Madison area farmers markets. He is a recently retired public and charter schoolteacher where not only he taught French, but also left a wake of school gardening programs. During his last year of teaching in 2021, Mark and a fellow science teacher created a course for the students called “The Honorable Harvest” that they based on the literary work of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This special course helped students learned how people and plants have an integral relationship with each other.
Mark sees tremendous potential to use real estate as the catalyst for positive social and environmental change. For him, real estate serves as an educational tool to not only impact individuals and families, but strengthen communities and networks of aligned businesses and organizations.
This story originally aired on Latitude’s Journal at https://chooselatitude.com/journal/mark-voss
