Mark Blaxill is one of three Republicans who have announced their candidacy for the Congressional seat in the 3rd Congressional District. An article on Tom Weiler is posted on our website. Adam Schwarze will be interviewed prior to the CD3 endorsing convention on April 23.
Mark Blaxill grew up and attended high school in Princeton, New Jersey. His parents wanted to raise their family in a small-town atmosphere outside of the urban metropolis of New York City,
Enjoying what his home town had to offer, Mark continued his education at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, now known as the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Not interested in being a doctor or a lawyer, he chose to pursue a path leading to a career in business.
Princeton gave him the opportunity to accept internships with businesses in the Philippines and Japan. During his junior year, Mark did an independent study focusing on energy policy. His senior thesis was on the relationship between Japan and other countries in Southeast Asia.
Mark has always found it easy to work with numbers, and he particularly enjoyed his college courses in economics. He had a goal of going to the Harvard Business School after graduation, but knew that he had a greater chance of getting accepted if he had some business experience. So, his next step was a job with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Harvard’s backyard.
BCG is an American global management consulting firm founded in 1963. By 1966, it had opened a second office in Tokyo, Japan. It typically recruits from top undergraduate colleges, advance degree programs and business schools. Blaxill was required to do in-depth analyses of corporate clients. Armed with quantitative data, he would work with company leaders on market strategy and process improvements. He found that he needed to approach each client challenge with humility, learning from workers at every level from top to bottom.
Shortly after joining BCG, he was accepted at Harvard Business School and graduated with a Masters in Business Administration. He was then able to return to BCG to continue his career.
Mark’s consulting work covered the automotive, forest products, and information technology industries in the US and overseas. Stressing collaborative decision-making, over his 25-year career at BCG he rose to be a Senior Partner and leader of the Strategic Practice. His experience in this area made clear the value of patents and Intellectual Property in sustaining and growing companies
In 2007, Mark left BCG to co-found 3LP Advisors, a patent analysis and brokerage business focused on the innovation economy. For the next eight years, he worked to help patent owners protect their intellectual property and technology companies leverage innovate through acquiring licensing rights.
By 2015, policies implemented during the Obama administration weakened the protections afforded to patent holders, making it easier for wealthy organizations to challenge or circumvent patent protections. By this point in time, he had recognized that data itself was a source of value and the ability to gather and analyze it was a form of intellectual property He capitalized on that knowledge to start up XLP Corp., a technology analytics and data architecture specialist.
In 2016, XLP took on Vibrant Technologies, a company based in Minnetonka that is a global buyer, reseller, and maintainer of servers, storage and networking equipment. Mark left XLP in 2019 to become the Chief Financial Officer for Vibrant and relocated to Minnesota. This professional move enabled Mark to advance two threads of his life – corporate strategy and autism.
Blaxill is the single father of two daughters. The first daughter is thriving in southern California. The second daughter was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 2 years, 9 months. Mark soon devoted himself to learning all he could about autism. With his background in analytical engineering, he has delved deeply into the data surrounding the condition. Over the past 20 years, he has become a self-described “warrior dad”.
Mark has participated in National Institutes of Health Strategy panels, served on Blue Ribbon Committees, and testified in front of congress. He has written several books and numerous scientific studies and commentaries. He has also become the Chief Financial Officer of the Holland Center in Minnetonka and Eden Prairie, a day treatment program and medical clinic for children with autism
In the middle of this period of study and advocacy, Mark and his wife divorced after 28 years together. His autistic daughter has remained in Massachusetts with her mother.
In 2021, at the end of the period when Jennifer Carnahan was chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota, Blaxill served as treasurer of the state party.
In challenging Dean Phillips to be the Congressman from the 3rd Congressional District, Mark Blaxill intends to focus on three key themes:
• Common Sense Economics. He believes that President Trump did a good job with the national economy during his time in office. He supports the “America First” approach to dealing with other major world economic powers. He has been particularly critical of trade deals that have proven to be unfair to the U.S.
• Poking the Pieties of the New Left. Mark cites Critical Race Theory, transgender equity policies, and the movement to defund the police as three examples of liberal campaigns that have gone beyond irrational. The Democratic Party platform has become “a toxic mixture of stuff.” He decries the degree of involvement of Big Tech in these actions and their collaboration in censuring dissent.
• Health Freedom. Mark would fight government mandates, particularly regarding personal health. He is concerned about the “neurodiversity” movement, which does not recognize the higher support needs of developmentally-challenged individuals, such as those that have autism.
Mark has lived in Wayzata since 2019. For more information on Mark Blaxill, please visit his campaign website at MarkBlaxillForCongress.