Mark Vander Ploeg serves on the Advisory Board for the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS). He has over thirty-five years of investment banking experience, providing strategic and merger and acquisition advice to major retail and consumer companies in the United States and globally until his retirement in 2012. Mark was a Senior Managing Director of Evercore Partners and, prior to Evercore, served as Vice Chairman of Investment Banking and Head of Consumer Industries for Merrill Lynch & Co. He is a board member of the Spencer Foundation, an education research foundation in Chicago, a board member of Stanford’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching (CSET) and an Associate Member of Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He also previously served as Co-Chair of Stanford’s Parents Advisory Board. Mark is a former director of Okabena Company, the investment company of the Dayton Family, founders of Target Corporation, and currently serves as lead director of Dawson Geophysical Company and as advisor to the board of LyTen Inc., a Silicon Valley technology company. Mark has an MBA from the University of Chicago, a BA from Macalester College, where he is a former Trustee and Board Chair, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Liberal Arts at Stanford. Mark has three daughters, two grandsons and a step-son. He and his wife live in Menlo Park and enjoy golfing, hiking and family.