The first words Mark uttered as a baby came out as a complete sentence and he hasn’t stopped putting words together since. He’s the resident Boomer in an office full of Millennials—and holds his own admirably (he thinks). He approaches words with a special reverence and views the N.Y. Times Sunday Crossword as a personal challenge.

Dogs are Mark’s favorite people. He knows his way around a kitchen (he once won a chili cook-off) but has never mastered the art of chop-chop-chopping like the TV chefs. And agrees with most anthropologists that the art of storytelling is the key reason humanity survived as a species.