People

Ben H. Winters is an American author, journalist and playwright, who is best known for the 2009 parody novel, *Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters*, which reached the New York Times best seller list in September 2009. His second novel, *Android Karenina* (Quirk Books), will be published in June of 2010; his young adult novel, *The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman*, will be published by HarperCollins in September, 2010.

Ben Holden is a Data Science Graduate Student at the University of Colorado - Boulder, as well as a Suffolk University alum where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economy (PPE). Since beginning his college career, he has spent a number of years as an assisting researcher focusing on globalization and economics. He also dedicated time to analyzing the American workers and automation, while depicting the causes behind market disruptions and workforce displacement. He has held various positions in institutions such as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, The Beacon Hill Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Ben has shared stories, including with the New York Times Magazine, about how aligning right-of-center and being a member of the LGBTQ community creates often stirring interactions with other conservatives who believe they're on the same page. He is mostly liberal on social issues, but believes solutions are best derived in a symbiosis between a free market and limited but effective government. Having undergone an evolution, he disapproves of ideological purity, partisanship, and polarization, and is therefore skeptical of most forms of activism. He believes that problems are best solved by working in the private sector, and is currently completing his Master of Science in Data Science out in Colorado.

Ben is a Creative Director on the Art, Copy & Code team at Google whose focus is to explore the future of advertising through innovative projects with brands and their agencies. His work takes him inside virtually all of the major US advertisers and the top advertising agencies, helping shape them for this digital / mobile age. He came from Hill Holliday, where he worked on Dunkin Donuts, Johnson and Johnson and Major League Baseball. Prior to that, he was at Digitas, where he ran global loyalty for IHG, and led campaigns for Holiday Inn, Samsung, and SAP, among many others, including providing the voice of the Aflac Duck in social media. His past life includes being the Dean of Admissions at Bennington College, building a network of early stage venture funds with Village Ventures, and publishing The Rope Eater, a novel, with Doubleday.

Ben Mezrich has written four books of non-fiction, most notably the New York Times Best Seller *Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions*, which was adapted into the 2008 film *21*. A former Harvard student, Mezrich has published fiction in the past and hosted GSN’s *World Series of Blackjack*. His newest book is *The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal*, which has already been optioned by Sony Pictures.

Director of Greater Boston.

Ben Shahn was one of the foremost Social Realist artists of the 1930s. Shahn was born in 1898 in Kovno, Lithuania, the first of five children of a traditional Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a woodcarver and cabinetmaker. As Eastern European Jews during the period, they faced discrimination and violence everywhere they turned. When the Russian Revolution of 1917 declared war on all forms of anti-Semitism, Jews instinctively turned toward the new government.

Ben Shattuck's most recent book, The History of Sound (Viking), was the recipient of the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His film adaptation of the title story premiered at the 2025 Cannes film festival. His first book, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau (Tin House), was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New England Bestseller, and was nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is a recipient of the PEN Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Pushcart Prize. He spends time between Brooklyn and coastal Massachusetts, where he owns and runs the oldest general store in America, built in 1793.

**Ben Solari** manages the global corporate sales teams at DataRobot with a focus on helping companies use accessible machine learning technology to solve practical business problems and improve their operations.

Benaree Pratt Wiley was born on May 13, 1946 in Washington, D.C. Her mother, Mildred Petticord Pratt, died when she was two years old, and her father, Carlisle Pratt, was an attorney and judge before his death in 1993. Wiley grew up in Washington, D.C., raised by her paternal grandmother Hazel and her aunt, Aimee Pratt. She is also the sister of Sharon Pratt Kelly, who served as the mayor of Washington, D.C. from 1991-1995. Wiley attended the public schools of Washington and graduated from Howard University in 1968 with a B.A. degree in marketing. After receiving her M.B.A. from Harvard's Business School, she served as a consultant with such corporations as Abt Associates, Contract Research Corporation and Urban Systems Research and Engineering. As an independent consultant, Wiley worked with non-profit organizations to build their capacity and refine their program delivery. She then combined her interests in business and child development with the establishment of a high-end toy store, Giocatolli, on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. In 1991, Wiley became the president and CEO of The Partnership, Inc., in Boston. The Partnership's goal is to assist businesses in the Boston area to attract, retain and develop professionals of color, to increase the number of black professionals at all levels of leadership in the corporate sector of Boston and to help these professionals navigate the complex corporate structure of Boston. Under Wiley's leadership, The Partnership became a major force in Boston's corporate world, helping over 1,300 African Americans integrate themselves into the corporate community and stimulated more than 200 corporate partners to open doors for black professionals. Wiley is highly active in the Boston community. In 2003, Wiley was selected as one of Boston's most powerful women by *Boston Magazine*

Benedict J. Fernandez was born on April 5, 1936 in New York City, in the Hispanic neighborhood of East Harlem. Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director and graphic designer, invited him to enroll in his Design Laboratory and became Fernandez's most influential mentor. Brodovitch arranged for Ben to become the darkroom tech and manager at Parsons School of Design. Nobody could have imagined in those very early days what a significant role Ben would eventually play at Parsons. With Brodovitch's encouragement Ben went on to found the Photo Film Workshop, in the basement of Joseph Papp's Public Theatre. The Photo Film Workshop taught photography to ghetto youth, free of charge. Many of the workshop participants went on to successful careers and lives.

Benedita Souza da Silva Sampaio, was born on April 26, 1943 in Praia do Pinto, in Rio de Janeiro to Ovidia da Silva out of wedlock, despite the fact that Ovidia was married to someone other than Benedita's father. Benedita da Silva is also known as Bene' and is an African-Brazilian politician. Throughout her life, Benedita faced prejudice and racism for her humble and African origins, but she has overcome those barriers by becoming the first female and black governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Moreover, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nominated her Secretary of State as well.

GBH Board of Trustees Vice Chair

Professor Braude teaches courses on the Middle East and on European-Middle Eastern relations. In addition to those interests his research also focuses on religious, racial, and ethnic identities in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim culture. Currently he is completing *Sex, Slavery, and Racism: The Secret History of the Sons of Noah*, which examines the construction of attitudes toward color and identity from the ancient Near East and the classical world to the present. More broadly, he is interested in post-national conceptions of historiography. He has been a visiting professor at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Benjamin Lloyd Crump is an American civil rights attorney and founder of the Tallahassee, Florida-based law firm Ben Crump Law. He is known for his association with the 2012/2013 George Zimmerman case, and for representing the family of Michael Brown, a 17-year-old African-American man shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri.

Benjamin Desmartins was trained by Pascal Caffet during his studies at the Ecole de Paris des Metiers de la Table (Paris School of Culinary Arts). He took up the family business and created the France Cocoa brand. He received first prize for praline-filled chocolates at the 2003 Chocolate Fair and first prize for creativity from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.