Mark B. Dusza’s first job at age ten was that of a popcorn hawker in a local baseball park, where he quickly mastered the sales and marketing skills that would carry him though academia, and his personal and career lives.

            Attending Catholic elementary and secondary schools run by strict nuns and liberal Franciscan friars, Mark excelled as a theological scholar and was offered acceptance to the Notre Dame Seminary, but chose the radical incubator, Ashland College, instead. Drifting from Philosophy to Metaphysics to Political Science to English, he finally transferred to the University of Northern Colorado where there was a 12:1 female to male student ratio.

From the Dean’s list to basement dweller, Dusza supported his way through five more years of college by distilling and distributing two varieties of Moonshine: Fightin’ and Fuckin’. Graduating in 1981 with a self-designed Interdisciplinary Degree in Environmental Photography, Mark struggled to peddle his photographs to the national magazine market.

In 1982 while cooking in an Estes Park, Colorado restaurant, Dusza had a stroke of good fortune when one of his photos of the Lawn Lake Flood mysteriously landed on the cover of Newsweek Magazine. Parlaying his earnings into a start up cottage industry business, the clever Dusza created the “All Purpose Generic Disc” to compete with Whamo’s patent contested Frisbee.

In 1983 when the Federal Courts upheld Whamo’s patent, Dusza was forced to pull his product from the market at which time he moved into a school bus that he converted into a mobile home and darkroom. Traveling the Southwest, he eventually ran out of money for gas in Tempe, Arizona where he began an unprecedented career in the hospitality industry.

From 1984 to 1990, Dusza held over 40 jobs with 15 different hotel and restaurant companies. A highlight included working as Director of Business development for a Wackenhut subsidiary that provided food service contracts to jails and prisons. Turned off by the corrupt business practices of correctional food service management (he was fired), Mark headed off into the Arizona desert on a vision quest to find his purpose on this rock. Mistaking Amanita Muscaria for an edible mushroom, Mark’s week-long out-of-body experiences lead him to India where he dedicated his energies to saving the poorest of the poor in the ghettoes of Calcutta.

            While working at Hope Academy in Calcutta, Mark was inspired by his introduction to Mother Theresa. Absorbing the Sisters’ culture and diet, he subsequently coined and trademarked the phrase “Extreme Cuisine” for the Food Television Network. The reality TV series still airs today. 

            From 1992 to 1998 Mark worked for and consulted with hundreds of high profile sporting and entertainment events producers from Super Bowl XXX to the Woodstock II Festival. From selling high profile sponsorships to implementing revolutionary non-profit human resource cooperatives, Mark traveled the continent non-stop. In 1998 he accepted a position from one of his smaller clients to run their family-owned gourmet cheese importing and distributor business. For three years he lived on a diet of Triple Crème Brie and Organic French Roquefort, until for health reasons, he was forced to go an a Gandhi-like fast. During the mind-altering phase of his 30-day fast, Mark was given the Divine Providence for Organic Food Brokers.