Mark Wierda,  president and co-founder of Cultivate Studios, graduated from Trinity in 2003 with a degree in business and a minor in Art and Graphic Design. Soon after graduating, Mark co-founded Cultivate Studios with fellow alums Chris Pierik and Bret Hoekema, along with the investment and support of Marty Ozinga III and Ozinga Bros. Inc.

Cultivate Studios was founded out of a desire to use a variety of creative skills in collaboration to “make great things.” In its earliest years, this took the form of production work, mostly documentary photography and video shoots. During that time, Mark and his team were able to travel all over the world—to the Central African Republic, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia, Bolivia, Romania, and Turkey—where they had the privilege of telling the stories of a number of humanitarian, faith-based NGOs.

Since then, Cultivate Studios has grown significantly, both in size and scope. As a brand strategy agency, it has thirteen plus full-time and part-time employees, five of whom are Trinity graduates. The team is comprised of thinkers, creators, technologists and storytellers, all dedicated to the same goal: creating great things.

Today, Cultivate is wholly dedicated to helping organizations overcome challenges and seize opportunities. It works alongside each organization to explore and uncover its core identity and to help it build a comprehensive brand strategy that is used to effect change for the better and to help each organization achieve its full potential.

Long before he was the president of Cultivate Studios, Mark was a budding photographer. He grew up in southwest Montana where he learned his craft alongside his mother, herself an accomplished portrait photographer, and his father, a self-employed builder. He spent many hours through high school and college shadowing his mother while she worked, and more hours in the darkroom (aka the bathroom) in their house developing his photographs. Today he lives in the Chicago area with his wife and three children.