Mark T Shapiro grew up in northeast Ohio. He received a BS in Biology from Indiana University, went to medical school at The Ohio State University, did a surgical internship at Passavant Memorial Hospital in Chicago, then served two years as a Flight Surgeon in the US Air Force at the end of the Vietnam war. After that, he completed his Residency in Ophthalmology at Jefferson Medical Center in Philadelphia. He then moved to Greensboro in 1976 and did General Ophthalmology for close to fifty years with an emphasis on Cataract and Refractive Surgery. He is a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Society, and the North Carolina Medical Society. He is married to Donna Levine Shapiro and has two sons and twin grandchildren.