Mark Edwards

Mark Edwards is the CEO and co-founder of Upstream USA, a nonprofit that is focused on ensuring equitable, patient-centered contraceptive care is provided as basic healthcare. Alongside a team of clinical advisors and public health professionals, Upstream partners with healthcare organizations and systems across the country to transform the delivery of contraceptive care, so that patients have access to the full range of contraceptive services. Under Mark’s leadership, Upstream is already the largest organization in the US using an evidence-based, sustainable program model focused on improving contraceptive access in primary care. Since launching in 2014, Upstream has grown from working with a single health center serving just 4,000 women of reproductive age to working in 33 states and launching a national scaling plan to reach more than five million patients by 2030. Upstream’s work and partnerships have been featured in The New York Times, Harvard Public Health, Bloomberg, Politico, and Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Prior to co-founding Upstream, Mark was the founder and executive director of Opportunity Nation, a national bipartisan campaign made up of 300 national nonprofits focused on expanding economic mobility through bipartisan federal policy reform. Mark is a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Entrepreneur, an Ashoka Fellow and delivered a 2023 TED talk about Upstream’s founding story. He has served on more than a dozen nonprofit boards and advisory committees and currently serves as a Trustee for the Barr Foundation. Mark is a graduate of Harvard College, the proud father of three girls, a grandfather of three grandsons, and lives with his wife in Massachusetts.