Mark Szuszkiewicz was born in Coney Island and spent his early childhood living in Park Slope Brooklyn before moving to Bay Ridge. Mark is the son of 2 Polish immigrants, and he did not grow up in a rich family. He did grow up with 3 siblings who he shared the same room with, and a loving family that believed in hard work. His father worked days as an HVAC mechanic and his mom worked the night shift doing data entry at a bank in Manhattan. His father would wake up the kids to pick up Mark’s mother at 5am from the night shift and then off to another long day at work while his mom would cook breakfast and take the kids to school after a long night of work. Being instilled with believing in hard work and a loving family is all the riches he needed. He became an altar boy in his early years waking up at 7am on Sundays to serve the 8am masses and made money from tips at funerals and weddings. It was kind of like his first job making money before he was even 10 years old.

After being the valedictorian of his Catholic grade school, he went on to Bishop Ford CCHS where he played for 3 different sports teams (football, ice hockey, and track & field) and had a part time job as well. There were no days off in high school as his weekends involved work and/or team obligations. After high school he was invited to play college football but without a scholarship in a 1AA division that did not offer scholarships. He was only offered a partial academic scholarship to IONA and rather than accumulating student loans he decided not to rush into college. He started working 3 jobs the summer after graduation before becoming a security guard full time at the end of 1999.

After working as a security guard and retail sales, Mark Szuszkiewicz decided to take a step towards his passion of financial services and became a stockbroker. He recently turned 19 years old and after only a little over a month of self-studying he passed the series 7 examination and became the youngest stockbroker at his firm. His work schedule starting around 7am and ended around 10pm. He had a commute of driving from Bay Ridge to Bethpage Long Island and the work hours affected his personal relationship with who he was dating at the time. So, he decided put his stockbroker career on hold and returned to retail sales. After that relationship ended, he immediately went back to his passion for a career in financial services in 2005. Instead of being just a stockbroker, he obtained his life & health insurance license as well as passing the series 7 again for a second time, and his series 66 becoming a financial adviser for Met Life. He won multiple sales awards and within months he was training a room full of new agents on product knowledge and how to be a successful financial services representative. In 2008 he worked for one of the largest banks in the world becoming the top financial adviser in his district and covering 3 bank branches while training 10 different bankers on investment knowledge.

After being a financial adviser, Mark Szuszkiewicz started a production company that produced an award-winning sports talk local cable TV program where he interviewed numerous celebrities and athletes. He has interviewed numerous boxing champions including the most recent American heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder, Larry Holmes, Iran Barkley, Butterbean, and many others. He has interviewed former NBA players including former Knicks greats like John Starks and Anthony Mason at Mason’s home. Aside from just interviewing sports figures he also played for the semi pro football team the Brooklyn Mariners, and competed in the Daily News Golden Gloves boxing tournament while being trained by former welterweight champion Aaron Davis.

Aside from sports he created a music TV show and a political TV show where he interviewed former mayor candidate Joe Lhota, former congressman Michael Grimm, and other politicians.

Aside from TV he was still a financial adviser for a different insurance company before becoming an independent insurance broker offering coverage from multiple insurance companies instead of just working for one. He also obtained his real estate license for the second time (The first time while he was working for Met Life and got it during his vacation but never used it so it expired). This time he was a real estate agent offering rentals while also becoming a financial adviser again, and producing/hosting award winning cable TV programming, and obtaining a TLC hack license to drive part time on nights and weekends. He licensed 2 TLC vehicles while renting one out and driving the other to grow a TLC vehicle leasing company but never expanded it more than 2 vehicles as industry regulations and other reasons made it no longer feasible.

He also launched his acting career in this decade working on several films and series. In one of his most recent projects, he plays a father of a special needs child in the short film “The Needs” which is available internationally on Amazon Prime and soon to be on the Discovery Channel.

While balancing multiple professions he was also an advisory board member for a youth mental health charity and organized numerous charity events for a variety of charitable organizations. He also organized an annual NBA 2k tournament where the finals took place at the Barclays center. In 2018 the proceeds benefited Anthony Mason Jr.’s charity Family on Three which helped donate toys to kids on Christmas. So on Christmas day in 2018 Mark Szuszkiewicz dressed up as Santa and went to the homeless shelter in Brownsville Brooklyn where he handed out toys to surprised kids that made their Christmas and his very special.

This was a very diverse decade for Mark Szuszkiewicz and he topped it off by obtaining his class A CDL at the end of 2019 and drove across the country in an 18 wheeler. He always wanted to see the country, so he figured he’d learn yet another skill and get paid while doing it. Mark Szuszkiewicz is still a licensed life and health insurance financial services representative and he considers insurance and financial services his area of expertise.