Mark D. Vestrich

Mark D. Vestrich graduated from Evergreen in 1976. He came to Evergreen to study music. While living in Olympia, he founded the "Old Coast Highway Orchestra and Tattoo Parlor," which performed at Evergreen's commencement ball in 1975. He served on the first Students & Activities Board at Evergreen in 1972. Mark finished his studies at Evergreen in Computer Science and left Washington in 1976. He eased into his return to the East Coast, by spending that summer teaching sailing on Martha's Vineyard.

Over the next twenty years, Mark worked in the computer business with several startups as well as at Intel. During that period Mark moved from Annapolis to Denver to Silicon Valley.

Ready for a dramatic change, Mark started art school in 1996 and completed a Bachelors in Fine Arts in drawing and printmaking from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1999. He now works in a studio, making drawings and prints, a sample of which can be viewed at the Graphics Arts Workshop website http://gaw.zpub.com/about.php.

Mark worked closely with past Evergreen President Jane Jervis to establish several key funding programs. He provided the initial seed grant that launched the Evergreen Fund for Innovation. Jane credits him as one of the people who inspired her to focus on faculty development programs, and he was a major donor to the Jane Jervis Endowment for Faculty Development.