Mark Edwards

Mark Edwards is the CEO and co-founder of Upstream USA, a nationally recognized non-profit dedicated to empowering people to achieve their goals by reducing unintended pregnancy. Raised by a father who focused on giving his kids the opportunities he didn’t have, Mark grew up with an awareness of and appreciation for the unique privileges he had. Soon after college, he became involved in local anti-poverty work, helping launch a preschool program for homeless children. In 2009, Mark founded Opportunity Nation, a bipartisan coalition of 300 national nonprofits focused on expanding economic mobility. In the course of that work, for which he was named an Ashoka Fellow, he heard different versions of the same story as he asked people about the challenges they faced: many spoke about the role unplanned pregnancy played in derailing their life trajectories. Inspired by what he heard from young people around the country, Mark co-founded Upstream in 2014, a non-profit organization partnering with health centers to increase equitable access to the full range of contraceptive options and strengthen reproductive autonomy. Upstream envisions a future where patient-centered contraceptive care is an integral part of primary care, for all people. The organization’s planned expansion will transform contraceptive care in more than 700 healthcare centers across the United States by 2030, serving 5 million women of reproductive age. Mark is a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Entrepreneur, has served on more than a dozen nonprofit boards and advisory committees and is currently a trustee of the Barr Foundation.

Contraceptive care needs to become a standard part of primary care