People

Mark Linder is Co-Founder and President of Culinary Sciences, Inc. an early stage AgTech/FoodTech company that manufactures transformational, patented Extreme Vacuum technology equipment that can rapidly cool food for high-volume food and agriculture related businesses, and which offers innovative food treatment applications like rapid flavor infusion.

Mark currently serves as Agriculture Liaison for the Culinary Institute of America, a role created for him in 2003. Other current advisory leadership roles are with Rural Development Partners, Culinary One Investments, and Agrology, a leading Predictive Agricultural company and a Public Benefit Corporation.

Mark is the co-founder and was the first President of the Agriculture in the Classroom program, which he helped to establish first in California, then throughout the United States during his 23-year tenure with the California Farm Bureau. In 1988, he co-founded Project Food, Land & People (FLP), and in 1998, under Mark’s leadership as the first full-time CEO of FLP, he established its headquarters in the newly formed Presidio National Park.

Mark was instrumental in co-founding the award-winning America’s Heartland television show, which is aired weekly on RFD TV and public television stations across the United States. Now in its 17th season, America’s Heartland has aired more than 400,000 times on PBS channels representing 97% of all U.S. TV markets. America’s Heartland YouTube page averages more than 200,00 views per month and AH YouTube videos have been watched more than 40 million times.

Mark was a long-serving advisor to the California Institute of Food & Agricultural Research and served for many years on the Center for Land-Based Learning’s board of directors and the California State Fair’s Agricultural Advisory Board.

Mark and his wife, Mary, live in California’s Napa Valley.