Mark Safford

Associate, The Futures Strategy Group

Mark Safford joined the Futures Strategy Group as an associate in 2005, after a distinguished career in the federal government. Mr. Safford was a senior consultant on FSG’s interagency global affairs engagement known as Project Horizon, in which he played a leading role in developing scenarios, facilitating workshops, and synthesizing the results.

For nearly 30 years, Mr. Safford held responsible strategic planning and analysis positions within the federal government.  He drafted numerous research and white papers, presentations, planning documents and technology reports, congressional testimony and correspondence; planned and managed outreach and training events; gave public presentations; and coordinated numerous interagency working groups. Most recently at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Volpe Center in Cambridge MA, he worked on projects that focused on exploring the future of transportation via travel demand forecasts, analyzing major trends and their impacts on future transportation markets, and on detailed scenario-based planning exercises for DOT, NASA, the FAA, and the Joint Program and Development Office (JPDO), a multi-agency effort to create the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS).

At the U.S. Department of State, Mr. Safford served as a professional staff member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Overseas Security, which developed several reports assessing the security of U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel both overseas and in the U.S. and made more than 100 recommendations for improvements. He then assisted the State Department in drafting a successful Congressional Supplemental Budget request that led to the creation of the new Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) with over 500 new positions and more than $4 billion in additional funds.  Upon the creation of DS, Mr. Safford served as the first director of the new Bureau’s Planning Staff, where he led a process for aligning DS resources with specific security program requirements and activities.  

Prior to these assignments, Mr. Safford was a Foreign Service Officer who served as Visa Officer at the American Embassy in London, Staff Assistant to the Counselor of the Department, and Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Administration. He began his career as a program analyst in the Long-Range Planning Branch at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR).

Mr. Safford holds a B.A. summa cum laude with Departmental Honors in History from Gettysburg College, where he was also Phi Beta Kappa and a National Merit Scholar; an M.A. in English History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.