Dr. Mark Aoyagi is the Director of Sport & Performance Psychology and Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver, where he also founded and directs the Center for Performance Excellence. Along with partners Dr. Artur Poczwardowski, Dr. Steve Portenga, and Dr. Jamie Shapiro, Mark formed Sport & Performance Excellence Consultants, a practice dedicated to providing performance psychology services to people seeking excellence and fulfillment in their performances and life. His areas of expertise include performance excellence, team effectiveness, and achieving meaning, satisfaction and fulfillment through sport, work, and life. Mark is a recognized sport psychology consultant and has worked with several NCAA Division I athletic departments as well as professional and Olympic teams and athletes. He is a licensed psychologist in the state of Colorado, a Certified Consultant, AASP (Association for Applied Sport Psychology) and is listed in the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Sport Psychology Registry. Mark is active in several professional organizations including the International Society for Sport Psychology, American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP); and has served on the Student Development Committee for AASP and as Member-at-Large on the Executive Committee, member of the Public Interest Committee, member of the Practice Committee, and Chair of the Science Committee for APA Division 47 (Exercise and Sport Psychology). Mark has several publications and national conference presentations on the topics of sport psychology, team effectiveness, models of sport psychology practice, and ethics among others, and co-edited (with Artur Poczwardowski) Expert Approaches to Sport Psychology: Applied Theories of Performance Excellence. He has been an invited speaker for several professional teams and college athletic departments in the United States as well as internationally for high performance groups in Canada, Poland, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand.
Mark earned a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Sport Psychology from the University of Missouri in 2006 and was the Sport Psychology Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California. Prior to that, he completed a B.S. in Exercise and Sport Science and a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Utah in 1999 and a M.S. in Kinesiology, Sport Psychology emphasis from Georgia Southern University in 2001. Mark also completed a Graduate Business Certificate in Management from the University of Denver Daniels College of Business in 2011. He was the recipient of the inaugural Early Career Professional Award from Division 47 (Exercise and Sport Psychology) of the American Psychological Association in 2013, and the 2005 Student-Practitioner Award from the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology for excellence in applied sport psychology. Mark played rugby, football, baseball, and wrestling competitively, and now enjoys a variety of recreational sports and outdoor activities.