LISTEN to today's show with Benjamin Wagner.
About Benjamin Wagner
Benjamin Wagner is a creative, consultant,
coach, and founder of Essential Industries Incorporated.
Essential Industries (named after the
Saint-Exupéry quote that “What is essential is invisible to the eye”) is a
boutique consulting firm specializing in individual and organizational
strategy, transformation, communication, and collaboration.
Benjamin
consults and coaches executives, high potential professionals and teams seeking
to build their business, sharpen their skills, and effectively manage
themselves and others. Clients gain the skills to communicate and collaborate
effectively, face uncertainty with confidence, lead through transformation and
facilitate a positive, respectful, and inclusive workplace culture.
Benjamin’s
expertise is shaped by thirty years of leadership as a technology and media
executive, award-winning journalist and filmmaker, and Columbia University
Punch Sulzberger Fellow.
In
a career spanning print (Rolling Stone, The Saratogian), radio
(WCZN-AM, KOTO-FM), broadcast and digital (Lifetime, MTV), and social media
(Facebook, Instagram), Benjamin has accrued a strong record leveraging
creative, editorial, operational and team leadership strength to build brands,
sustainable platforms and global programs at scale while accelerating results.
From his half-decade helping launch
Facebook’s Journalism Project globally and his tenure transforming MTV News
from a 9-to-5 TV to a 24/7 digital-first news organization, to his
award-winning PBS documentary, Mister Rogers & Me, podcast or
forthcoming documentary, Benjamin's hallmark is the essential nature of our
shared human experience.
As half of the filmmaking duo, Wagner
Brothers, he researched, interviewed, wrote, voiced, scored, co-directed,
produced, and marketed the documentary, Mister Rogers & Me. The film
unearths the roots of Mister Rogers' values, unmasks the forces acting against
depth and simplicity, and helps viewers develop the means to lead deeper,
simpler lives.
The 80-minute feature seized top prize at
numerous film festivals before bowing on PBS in 2012. The film aired thousands
of times across the country, often as the cornerstone of pledge drives, and
garnered coverage in The New York Times, Washington Post, and
more.
In October 2023, Benjamin premiered his
second documentary, Friends & Neighbors, in which he “looks for the helpers” who
are helping to heal a deeply anxious and uncertain America. The film is screening
in independent theatres throughout Mental health Awareness Month, and is slated
for wide release in May 2025.
Benjamin
released his tenth studio album, Constellations, recorded at Muscle
Shoal’s legendary FAME Studios, in 2022.
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Friends & Neighbors
Website:
www.friendsandneighbors.mov
Contact:
Benjamin Wagner
benjaminbwagner@gmail.com
Wagner Brothers
Wherever You Go (Music Video)
Benjamin Wagner Dot Com (Website)
Brief Description:
When Wilmington filmmaker Benjamin Wagner was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome, he saw the impact of trauma and adverse stress all around him. Inspired by Fred Rogers, the subject of his 2012 PBS documentary "Mister Rogers & Me," he decided to "look for the helpers” healing our anxious and uncertain communities.
Long Description:
When Iowa-born filmmaker Benjamin Wagner was diagnosed with PTSD in 2021, he suddenly saw the impact of trauma, trauma, adverse and chronic stress all around: in rising incidences of gun violence and hate crime, growth of antidepressant uses and binge drinking, and a mental health crisis so urgent that it prompted a national hotline.
And so he decided – as Fred Rogers, the subject of his 2012 PBS documentary, Mister Rogers & Me, always encouraged him – to “look for the helpers.”
In Friends & Neighbors, Wagner returns to his own developmental traumas to better understand their causes, context, and impact.
He interrogates his career to recognize how adverse stress maladapts our nervous systems and drives unhealthy coping mechanisms and poor health outcomes. He seeks insight from the people who are working to make the communities around them whole by helping heal a deeply anxious and uncertain population.
And he, in the words of his hero, one-time neighbor, and the subject of his 2012 PBS documentary, Mister Rogers & Me, Fred Rogers, always encouraged him, “looks for the helpers” in post-pandemic America, the people who are working to make themselves and the communities around them whole by helping heal a deeply anxious and uncertain population.
People like friend, Anne Kubitsky, who's Look for the Good Project is bringing social-emotional wellness, resilience and hope to grammar schools across America.
People like neighbor, Sarah McBride, whose election as America’s first transgender state senator accelerated dignity, equality, and a level playing field for all.
People like friend, Michael Tyler, who channeled the traumas of troubled inner-city childhood into the Carl Sandburg Literary Award-winning children’s book, The Skin You Live In.
People like neighbor Logan Herring, whose purpose-built community development is combating decades of structural racism, wealth inequality, and systemic neglect through affordable food, housing, and health care.
And people like friend Kelli Rae Powell, whose music therapy brings relief and joy to terminally ill patients.
By sharing these stories and journeys, we make space for others to do the same, and provide roadmaps for healing, and strategies for healthier lives and communities. Because, as Fred Rogers often said, when we "make the mentionable manageable,” we find a way forward together. And “when we look for the helpers, we know that there’s hope.”
Credits
· Written, Produced & Directed by Benjamin Wager
· Edited by Christofer Wagner
· Director of Photography Ismail Abdus-Saleem
