Mark Araujo

Community Engagement Manager 

mark@bostonfoodforest.org

As BFFC’s Community Engagement Manager, Mark helps engage neighbors with BFFC’s work and build community relationships across Boston to support neighbors in organizing, designing, and building food forest public parks. Mark is also responsible in supporting the creation of new food forest stewardship teams, building a knowledge base of community engagement strategies, and developing better systems for overall food forest construction, from breaking ground to harvesting. 

Mark is a designer, artist, educator, community organizer, and systems thinker (among many other things). He is passionate about helping others through the power of intentional and impact-oriented design with a keen focus on people and relationship-building. A self-proclaimed “people person”, huge nerd, and lover of all things nature, you may catch him sparking up a conversation with anybody willing to chat, with his head buried in a book at a nearby park or body of water, or simply walking around listening to the birds. Mark’s inspiration is to make civic life more resilient by collaborating and co-designing with community members to address key opportunities and create an atmosphere of openness and co-ownership. 

Prior to joining the Boston Food Forest Coalition, Mark worked at Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and the Mayor’s Office of Food Justice as a civic designer with a focus on food justice, food systems, and place-based co-design. Before moving to Boston, Mark was a museum educator and the Access and Community Programs Coordinator at El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, NYC. Mark received a joint Master of Arts in Design Engineering from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design in 2022, complementing his Bachelor of Science in Biology degree from Emory University.