About Mark Flint

Trail Design/Construction
Mark Flint has been designing, building and maintaining trails since the early 1990s. He began in Oregon, and moved to Southern Arizona in 1998, where he has been involved in the design of the Arizona Trail. Other trail systems he has done design for include the 50 Year Trail, 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo Race Course, Tucson Mountain Park and the Sweetwater Preserve. His most recent project involved helping plan and design trails in the Tortolita Mountain Park Preserve.

He was a member of the team that produced the “National Mountain Bicycling Strategic Action Plan,” a U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management planning document published in 2002.

In 2007 his manual, "Desert Design: Building Trails in a Harsh and Demanding Environment" was published by Arizona State Parks. It was revised and a second edition published in 2009. He has presented sessions on desert trail design and construction at the Arizona State Trails Conference (October 2007), the Professional Trail Builders Association conference in Reno (March 2008) and conducted a two-day design class for Arizona State Parks in March 2009.

Community Involvement/Volunteering
Mark Flint has been involved as a community volunteer for more than 30 years. His experience includes political campaigns, youth and adult sports and fundraising. He has worked as a volunteer leader in trails since the early 1990s, when he led the effort to build trails on BLM land in the Cascade Mountains between Salem and Portland, Oregon. That effort led to a nationally recognized partnership and trail system, the Upper Molalla River Corridor Trails.

Since 2004, Mark has been involved in an ambitious project to build more than 30 miles of the Arizona Trail, all with volunteer labor. In addition to doing trail design, he has served as the project’s steering committee co-chair, project coordinator and volunteer coordinator.

The project has garnered approximately $30,000 in cash and in-kind contributions and more than 50,000 hours of volunteer labor. His years of volunteer experience can help you:

• Develop a guerilla (low cost) marketing plan
  
• Work with media
  
• Create an organizational plan
  
• Develop templates for planning and organizing events
  
• Develop a plan for communicating with volunteers
  
• Provide incentives so volunteers keep coming back
  
• Train people to lead and motivate volunteers

He has made numerous presentations on volunteer recruitment and retention

Communications & Community Relations
Mark Flint’s experience in communications includes working as a newspaper reporter, editorial writer, editor and publisher. He also has worked as a consultant in community relations and communications for school districts, historical societies and private industry, including extensive experience in employee communications.

He has worked on election campaigns, helped fundraising campaign in leadership position and served on the boards of numerous professional and volunteer organizations. He has held a number of offices in the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), including president of the Tucson Chapter and director of the Pacific Plains Region.