Marcus Weiss is President of Economic Development Assistance Consortium (EDAC), a national consulting firm specializing in community revitalization initiatives and social enterprises. In addition to undertaking frequent technical assistance, evaluation and grantsmanship assignments for federal grantees, he has served as a contractor to federal agencies analyzing innovative approaches for community development finance capitalization, securitization and the leveraging of supplemental private sector resources. Subsequent to growing up in the family grocery business, Marcus Weiss has also aided governmental and foundation grantees in the development of food hubs, core neighborhood supermarkets/public markets, food trucks, aquaponics, community farms and restaurants as well as manufacturing incubators and retail districts.Mr. Weiss served as a co-designer of the “matching” OCS/Ford Foundation demonstration to fund CDC-sponsored public markets and as a co-founder and incorporating board member of Boston’s Southwest Corridor Community Farm. He also served as a consultant to the National League of Cities, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Commerce. He served on the Department of Labor’s Community Audit Experts Panel, was a member of the Enterprise Foundation’s Best Practices Database Advisory Board and the Ford Foundation – Public Markets Advisory Group. He has also lectured on community development finance and community economic development for the Radcliffe Institute of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mr. Weiss was a board member and officer of the city’s Boston Housing Development Corporation II. He previously served as the chairman of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s (MBA) Urban Development Committee and vice-chairman of the MBA’s Property Law Council.