Managing Partner
Ambassador Lana J. Marks
South African-born Lana Marks served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa from 2019 to 2021. Having grown up in the Eastern Cape, where she learned isiXhosa and Afrikaans, she possesses a deep knowledge of South Africa and its diverse peoples, cultures, languages, customs, and politics.
While serving as ambassador, Marks championed womens’ and youth rights, while pursuing an apolitical agenda of advancing the American cause in South Africa. As the leader of a complex mission that included three consulates and over 1,400 staff, Marks helped further cultivate the bilateral relationship between South Africa and the United States, with groundbreaking achievements in the realms of agricultural trade, automobile production, alternative energy, water reclamation, HIV epidemic control, land reform, and infrastructure projects.
Prior to her appointment, Ambassador Marks served as the Chief Executive Officer of the LANA MARKS fashion brand, which she founded in 1987. Over the course of 30 years, she developed the label into an international brand, operating throughout the United States and across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In 2001, she was one of 50 American CEOs – and the sole fashion representative – invited to the White House for the Women Business Leaders’ Forum.
A longtime advocate of women’s empowerment, Ambassador Marks has served on Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government's Women's Leadership Board and as a distinguished speaker at Georgetown University's Women's Leadership Initiative. She represented the United States twice for the Women Business Leadership Summit in Helsinki and is a supporting member of the Council of Women World Leaders. In 2002, the Star Group selected her as one of 40 businesswomen to be honored as a leading woman entrepreneur of the world. Ambassador Marks has joined forces with dozens of charities to advance breast cancer research and support children and the arts.
A former competitive tennis player, she is married with two children and is the proud grandmother of three grandchildren.
She is a member of the Council of American Ambassadors.
Managing Partner
Martin Marks
With nearly 15 years’ experience in strategic communications, writing, and speechwriting, Marks specializes in all-encompassing approaches to narrative strategies.
As a writer, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Travel + Leisure, The Huffington Post, The New York Post, Paper Magazine, and Hemispheres Magazine, among others. He served as the Editor-at-Large for a glossy imprint of the New York Observer, and has written, produced, and edited corporate and political copywriting for a variety of mediums.
He graduated from Johns Hopkins with a BA in Writing Seminars (Honors) and Near Eastern Studies, as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a finalist for the Marshall Scholarship. He then directly matriculated into the Writing Seminars graduate program, earning an MA, and then earned his MFA at NYU while teaching in the Expository and Creative Writing Programs.
He is an ERYT-200/RYT-500, having completed coursework at Nosara Yoga Institute, and founded his own yoga studio.