Representative Mark Chang Contact information

Mark Soo Chang was born on July 9, 1976, in Glen Burnie, Maryland. He is a first-generation Korean-American. His father, Hak Jin Chang, was a small business owner during the 1980s and 1990s. His mother passed away when Chang was eleven years old. He has two siblings.

Chang graduated from Glen Burnie High School and later attended the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and graduated cum laude in 1999. In 2010, Chang attended Loyola University Maryland, where he earned a Master of Business Administration degree.

Chang entered politics in 2003 by becoming a member of the Anne Arundel County Republican Central Committee. In 2006, he ran for the Maryland House of Delegates as a Republican and was defeated in the general election with 17.1 percent of the vote. After his defeat, Chang went to work as a community liaison for Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold. In 2012, he switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic.

Chang was replaced by County Executive Laura Neuman after she took office following Leopold’s corruption conviction and subsequent resignation, and he subsequently worked as a legislative aide to state senator James E. DeGrange Sr.

In 2014, Chang again ran for the Maryland House of Delegates in District 32, this time as a Democrat. He won the general election in November 2014, becoming the first Korean-American elected to the Maryland General Assembly from Anne Arundel County, and the first in the state alongside state delegate-elect David Moon.

Chang was sworn into the House of Delegates on January 14, 2015. He has been a member of the Appropriations Committee during his entire tenure, and became the committee’s vice chair in 2021. On December 5, 2023, Chang announced that he would run for Congress in Maryland’s 3rd congressional district, seeking to succeed retiring U.S. Representative John Sarbanes.