Mark D. Trent

Hey there!  Thanks so much for checking out my site.  If you haven't already figured it out my name is Mark Trenteseaux but I usually go by Mark Trent, or Mark D Trent.  No, I don't hate my last name, I just hate spelling it, repeating it, pronouncing it to everyone every time someone asks my name.  It means "thirty buckets" in French which was my nickname in school.  I guess there are worse names to be called, right?

 

Anyway, I digress, I was born and raised the oldest of four children, in the smallest state with the biggest name, Rhode Island!  After graduating high school with honors I headed to Washington, D.C. where I received a grant to study film and communications at American University.  During my sophomore year I participated in American's diverse World Capitals program and headed to Prague, CZ where I studied at the world famous FAMU!  It was there that I learned to speak Czech (at the time most Czechs did not speak English).  In fact, I directed my first film in Czech! It was an experience I'll never forget.

 

I finished out my time at American making a thirty minute senior thesis film, as well as being the TA for a class on Animation and color photography.  After graduating with honors, I high tailed it to Los Angeles with my roomates.  There I worked as a junior publicist for a busy literary PR firm, Hilsinger Mendelson, Inc.

 

Not long after, I was given the opportunity to join a promising start up called Pop.com.  A collaboration between Dreamworks and Imagine entertainment, Pop promised to be a site where the film and content was provided by the user.  It had real potential.  It was Youtube before Youtube!  Ultimately, it was before it's time and the plug was pulled by it's investors on the day we were destined to launch.  History would make it just another in a long list of imploding start-ups that signified the burst of the dot com bubble.

 

I was feeling lost, not knowing where to go next I went back East where I decided to get a graduate degree in Computer Science from Boston University.  My head was telling me to get a degree that was "worth" something, even though my heart was stuck in Los Angeles.

 

While I worked steadily towards my graduate degree the dot com bubble fully burst.   And just shortly after I graduated, hijackers flew planes originating from Logan airport into the World Trade Center.  The world stopped.  The economy stopped.  There were no jobs in Boston or anywhere else.  So I took a step back and started waiting tables so I could get my footing.  It was there, at Maggiano's restaurant in Columbus circle in Boston's South End that I met my husband, Tyler Doran, along with a cast of characters that have enriched my life and continue to nurture my soul to this day!

 

After about a year it felt as though the wheels were beginning to churn again.  Tyler and I decided to head back to Los Angeles, him for the first time.  Within months we both had jobs.  I had landed in a Marketing position at Disney International Television where I helped planned their annual Upfronts event and party as well as assisted in the creation of marketing materials, merchandise and promo shoots for Disney, ABC and Disney channel shows.

 

Tyler landed his dream job at Obsolete in Venice, CA, an eclectic art and antique gallery.

 

After a few years at Disney I was offered a better position managing at Warner Bros Worldwide Television Marketing department. Although I was sad to leave my Disney family, they encouraged me to go because they simply couldn't afford to keep me.

 

I loved my time at Warner Bros.  Under the tuttelage of Lisa Gregorian, CMO of Warner Bros., I learned a great deal with respect to Marketing and the Television industry.  It gave me the breadth of knowledge and a foundation for TV marketing that has grounded me throughout my career.

 

On September 25th, 2005, tragedy struck and Tyler's sister Emily, who was 23, was killed in an auto accident outside of Portland, OR.  We were due to visit her and her girlfriend the following weekend.  They were both killed instantly.  It shook our world to the core.  I had just been offered a promotion at Warner Bros.meanwhile my family had asked me to come home to help out with our family business.  Still grieving and feeling the need to be closer to family we moved back East.  

 

For the past nearly fourteen years I have built our Sales and Marketing department from the ground up.  We have grown exponentially, especially now, in a Global Pandemic we can't keep enough product on hand!

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In my spare time I enjoy writing and my current job takes me back and forth to LA often, well when we are traveling that is.  Please, check out some of my work under the Projects tab!