Marcus
Pittman
"My whole adult life I've been fighting for kids I'd never meet. Now I'm ready to be a dad to one I will."
If you sat down with Marcus for an hour, you'd leave knowing two things. First, the man cares — deeply, stubbornly, and out loud — about people most of the world tries not to see. Second, he is going to make you laugh at least twice.
Driven, principled, surprisingly silly.
Friends describe Marcus as a builder — the kind of person who looks at a problem the world has accepted and quietly asks, "why are we accepting that?" He has spent a decade starting things from scratch: films, a tech company, a national movement. At home, all of that conviction softens into a husband who makes Laura laugh during the news, a dog dad who narrates Tilly's inner monologue, and a friend who will sit on the porch with you for three hours when you need it.
The kitchen is open.
Our home in Moscow is the kind of place where the front door gets used. Marcus loves a long table with friends around it, deep conversation over coffee that goes well past midnight, and the particular satisfaction of cooking something that makes Laura close her eyes. He keeps a few traditions sacred — Sunday afternoons are slow, Christmas Eve is family-only, and dinner with each other almost every night. He says the home he wants to build for a child is one where someone is always around, the kitchen always smells like something, and "no" is reserved for the things that really matter.
Stories, ideas, the outdoors of Idaho.
Outside of work, Marcus is happiest with a good book, a long walk with Tilly, or a film that argues for something true. He loves the mountains around Moscow, road trips with Laura, and the kind of theology that wrestles with hard questions instead of dodging them. He's a film guy by trade and a film fan by nature — he can talk about cinematography the way some men talk about football. Quieter joys: black coffee, his record collection, a backyard fire pit when the weather cooperates.
The fun uncle, almost-dad.
Marcus has been advocating for the lives of children since the early 2010s — not as abstraction, but because he genuinely loves them. He's the husband who joins the kids' table at family dinners, the one who'll get on the floor and build the LEGO city, and the friend who remembers to ask the seven-year-old about her week before he asks her parents. His advocacy isn't theoretical for him; it's been a long, loud rehearsal for the moment he gets to put a child to bed in his own home.
The cornerstone is Christ.
Marcus is a Christian first — that single fact orders everything else about him. He believes that every life has worth because it was made by God, that families are the place where that worth gets nurtured, and that the work of his hands ought to reflect those convictions. He's not the man who'll preach at you over dinner, but he'll show up when you're sick, tell you the truth when it costs him something, and pray for your kid by name for years.
The one role I've been waiting for.
Marcus has built companies and movements, but the one thing he's wanted most since the day he married Laura is to be a father. He dreams about teaching a child to fish on the lakes around here, about reading bedtime stories badly, about being the dad who shows up at every school thing with a camera. He wants to raise a child who knows — bone-deep — that they are loved, safe, and wanted. After more than a decade of fighting for kids he'd never meet, he's ready for the long, slow, ordinary work of being there for the one God brings home.
"Marcus loves bigger than anyone I've ever met. The first time I saw him with a baby, I knew he was going to be the best dad. He's been practicing the patience and the silliness for years."
— Laura, on Marcus
Glimpses.
More to come — photos of life in Moscow, with friends, with Tilly, and (we hope) very soon with a little one.