Mourning the Heartbreaking Loss of Our Colleague, Mark Ayoub

The Change Research team is heartbroken to share that our beloved friend and colleague, Mark Ayoub, passed away on July 9. We have been privileged to know and collaborate with Mark since March 2018, and we will sorely miss his dedication to our forward-thinking clients, his tremendous contributions to our work, his enormous, ever-present smile and kind and generous personality, and his inspiring passion for a full life of politics, travel, puns, and volunteering. 

64362129_962137986174_562136116818765414

Mark on his recent trip to Madagascar with his fiancée, Angela. 

Mark joined Change Research when we were less than a year old as one of our first full-time employees. We hired Mark before we even had an office – he showed up for his first day at our co-founder Mike’s house. Mark brought an impressive resume of polling experience in Democratic politics and the private sector, and he immediately made outsized contributions to our fundamental polling approach.

Mark came to the office every day because he wanted to make a difference doing work for candidates and causes that inspired him, including the Green Advocacy Project, West Virginia teachers unions, and candidates Abdul El-Sayed, Sri Kulkarni, and Andrew Gillum. We will continue to feel Mark’s impact in so many areas of our work; he was the colleague that would drop everything to assist a teammate with any issue, patiently and warmly train new team members, and take on projects beyond his role to help us grow and improve. Mark’s work and spirit is truly woven through the DNA of Change Research. 

As a true Renaissance man, one of Mark’s most notable characteristics was the incredibly full life he lived. Mark was our resident travel expert and globetrotter; his most recent trip with his fiancée, Angela, was to Madagascar, where he joyfully sent back photos of himself with lemurs on his head. It wasn’t uncommon for Mark to let us know that he’d be shifting his hours to attend a trapeze class, participate in a bake-off, or travel to compete in an international pun competition. Mark inspires us all to participate more fully in the journey of life, and while we are heartbroken that he was taken from us too soon, we take some solace in knowing that his short years were fuller than most lifetimes.  

We are a small and tight-knit team, and we are all shocked and numb to have lost Mark. We grieve with his loving family. We also unanimously agree that Mark’s wish would have been for us to drive forward in our vital work of supporting forward-thinking candidates and causes in 2019, 2020, and beyond. Mark was intensely passionate about the world he wanted to see and help create, and we will work tirelessly to achieve his vision for a better American democracy. In the meantime, we invite well-wishers to contribute to one of Mark’s favorite causes, Miles4Migrants, using this link. While our team will be operating more slowly in these initial days, we are only further inspired to fulfill our mission as Mark would have wanted, and he will remain in our hearts along every step of the way. 

In sadness and loving tribute,
The Change Research team