Ben grew up on a small farm in Washington state. He was a learning disabled, public and homeschooled child that excelled in music. He attended the Oberlin Conservatory where he studied music education and composition. There, he met and married his absolute life-long best friend Marisa.
Ben taught music for a few years before he switched to teach computer science magnet programs to very select high school students. After earning a Masters from Johns Hopkins University, and further studied at Harvard, he his spent summers presenting at conferences and teaching other teachers around the country.
As Ben and Marisa’s children were learning to read, Ben started writing children’s stories for them that were designed to increase vocabulary and reading skills. He later landed writing contracts to write exam prep and textbooks for the computer industry through Pearson and Cisco Press.
Ben left the public sector for a few years to teach offensive cybersecurity to foreign graduate students. He loved the subject and the students but eventually fell back in love with public education. He now teaches computer science at a highly acclaimed technical high school in Baltimore, Maryland.