Mark Funkhouser, president of Funkhouser & Associates, is a municipal finance expert who has spent decades in government service. As the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, during the Great Recession, Mark made the tough choices to put his city on the path to fiscal sustainability. That experience, his long tenure as an auditor and his most recent post as the publisher of Governing magazine have made him a trusted and credible advisor to government officials across the country.

Mark also is the founder of the International Center for Performance Auditing (ICPA) and a founding member of the Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA). He has dedicated much of his career, research and writing to advancing the public sector performance auditing profession and strengthening its real-world impact.

Mark holds a master’s degree in social work from West Virginia University, an M.B.A. from Tennessee State University, and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in public administration and urban sociology from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.