Ben Berkowitz

Last updated
Ben Berkowitz
BenPBerkowitzByCarolineSmith.jpg
Berkowitz in July 2017
Born
Benjamin Platner Berkowitz

(1979-03-06) March 6, 1979 (age 39)
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Residence New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
OccupationEntrepreneur, activist, web designer
Years active2001–present
Known forCEO and co-founder of SeeClickFix
Spouse(s)Kathleen Fredlund
Children2
Website https://twitter.com/benberkowitz

Benjamin Platner Berkowitz (born March 6, 1979) is an American entrepreneur. Since 2008, he has been CEO and co-founder of the civic technology company SeeClickFix.

Civic technology, or civic tech for short, is technology that enables engagement, participation or enhances the relationship between the people and government by enhancing citizen communications and public decision, improving government delivery of service, and infrastructure. It encompasses mainly information technology and includes civic applications, platforms supporting government bodies, institutions and other software that enables those goals. Civic technology has had increasing promise and importance with time. In the Information Age, digital communications have become the foundation for political and economic exchanges. As advanced technologies have become commonplace in society and available throughout the population, many local governments and officials have begun utilizing them for public outreach and feedback. Specifically, the Internet is being used more for communication between governing officials and citizens.

SeeClickFix

SeeClickFix is a digital communications system company founded and based in Downtown New Haven, Connecticut. The company runs a website and app which assist users in communicating with local governments about non-emergency issues. SeeClickFix was established in 2008, with co-founder Ben Berkowitz as CEO.

Early life and education

Berkowitz was born in 1979 in New Haven, Connecticut, the first child of Jeremy I. Berkowitz (1948–2012) [1] and Jody Platner. His father was a general contractor who owned the Red Rooster Construction Company in the New Haven area. His mother is a retired day-care manager.

Connecticut state of the United States of America

Connecticut is the southernmost state in the New England region of the United States. As of the 2010 Census, it has the highest per-capita income, Human Development Index (0.962), and median household income in the United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital is Hartford and its most populous city is Bridgeport. It is part of New England, although portions of it are often grouped with New York and New Jersey as the Tri-state area. The state is named for the Connecticut River which approximately bisects the state. The word "Connecticut" is derived from various anglicized spellings of an Algonquian word for "long tidal river".

Berkowitz attended Foote School and graduated from Hopkins School in 1997. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in electronic media from The George Washington University in 2001.

Hopkins School school located in New Haven, Connecticut

Hopkins School is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational, day school located in New Haven, Connecticut.

A Bachelor of Arts is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, sciences, or both. Bachelor of Arts programs generally take three to four years depending on the country, institution, and specific specializations, majors, or minors. The word baccalaureus should not be confused with baccalaureatus, which refers to the one- to two-year postgraduate Bachelor of Arts with Honors degree in some countries.

Berkowitz's maternal grandfather Warren Platner (1919–2006) was an architect and designer who created the interior of the Windows on the World restaurant, which opened in 1976 atop the original World Trade Center. Platner is also known for interior design of the Ford Foundation Building in New York City. He created a collection of Modernist furniture still in production more than a half-century later. [2]

Warren Platner was an American architect and interior designer.

Windows on the World complex of venues in the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan

Windows on the World was a complex of venues on the top floors of the North Tower of the original World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan. It included a restaurant called Windows on the World, a smaller restaurant called Wild Blue, a bar called The Greatest Bar on Earth, and rooms for private functions. Developed by restaurateur Joe Baum and designed initially by Warren Platner, Windows on the World occupied 50,000 square feet of space in the North Tower. The restaurants operated from April 19, 1976 until September 11, 2001 when they were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

World Trade Center (1973–2001) complex of buildings in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States

The original World Trade Center was a large complex of seven buildings in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. It featured the landmark Twin Towers, which opened on April 4, 1973 and were destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. At the time of their completion, the Twin Towers — the original 1 World Trade Center, at 1,368 feet (417 m); and 2 World Trade Center, at 1,362 feet (415.1 m) — were the tallest buildings in the world. Other buildings in the complex included the Marriott World Trade Center, 4 WTC, 5 WTC, 6 WTC, and 7 WTC. The complex was located in New York City's Financial District and contained 13,400,000 square feet (1,240,000 m2) of office space.

Berkowitz's brother John Berkowitz (born 1982) is co-founder of Yodle, [3] an online advertising company that sold for a reported $342 million in 2016 [4] . He went on to become co-founder and CEO of OJO Labs [5] . Sister Brianna (born 1985) is a special education teacher.

Career

During college, Berkowitz worked as a part-time record-label representative in Washington, D.C. After graduation, he returned to New Haven and bought a home. He worked for his father's construction company and as a freelance graphic and web designer. He also created and sold souvenir t-shirts.[ citation needed ]

Berkowitz became the leader of a merchants' association that organized neighborhood cleanups, planted trees and opened a farmers' market. [6]

In 2012, Berkowitz and a friend organized the Inside Out Project, a public art installation meant to unify two neighborhoods separated by an interstate-highway overpass. [7]

Berkowitz is co-founder and board of directors president of Make Haven, a not-for-profit community tool shop for maker culture. He served on the boards of the United Way of Greater New Haven and the New Haven Land Trust.[ citation needed ]

Berkowitz spoke at the White House on July 3, 2012 at the invitation of its Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. In a forum on Citizen-Based Innovation, he discussed civic technology and the crowdsourcing of government functions. [8] [9]

In 2013 PBS Newshour listed Berkowitz as one of 10 "Young Agents of Change". [10]

SeeClickFix

As part of his civic-improvement efforts in New Haven, Berkowitz began asking local officials for infrastructure repairs, tree trimming and other public services. He was frustrated by the difficulty of communicating with government employees and a lack of a mechanism for followup. The original idea came from the app FixMyStreet.com which was in use in England. He conceived a civic engagement website where citizens could pinpoint issues like broken streetlights and potholes on a map and forward the repair requests to local officials. The problems could be publicly documented and their progress toward repairs tracked through a geographic information system. In the spring of 2008, Berkowitz launched SeeClickFix with partners Miles Lasater, Kam Lasater and Jeff Blasius. [11] [12]

Berkowitz and his collaborators were among the earliest programmers to use the Google Maps API (application programming interface) to create a third-party software as a service (SaaS) product. This technology made it simple for online media outlets to plug in SeeClickFix as a reader service. [13] SeeClickFix was well suited for a new wave of hyperlocal media, which sought to engage readers with quality-of-life coverage and online forums. Smartphones and social media brought further acceptance, enabling SeeClickFix users to document and share repair requests on the fly. [14]

Investors in SeeClickFix include O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures [15] and Omidyar Network. [16] [17] The State of Connecticut awarded significant funding to the company beginning in 2012. The startup company had 18 employees in 2013. [18]

The SeeClickFix client base spread to local governments, as municipalities began using the service to compile citizen requests and manage repair projects. By 2016 its staff had grown to 36. [19] According to the SeeClickFix website, its service covers more than 25,000 municipalities and 8,000 neighborhoods in the United States and internationally. By October 2016, it surpassed three million cases reported. [20]

Personal life

Berkowitz proposed to partner Kathleen Fredlund while the two were creating a public-art mural at a highway overpass. [21] They were married on August 26, 2012. They live in New Haven and have two children.[ citation needed ]

References

  1. ↑ "Legacy.com".
  2. ↑ Platner, Warren. "Collection of photos of furniture designed by the late Warren Platner". Pinterest.
  3. ↑ "Yodle". Crunchbase. Retrieved 1 November 2017.
  4. ↑ "lalorek" (June 14, 2017). "John Berkowitz, Yodle and OJO Labs Co-Founder Discusses Building Companies on Ideas to Invoices". SiliconHills: Technology News About Austin and San Antonio. Retrieved 1 November 2017.
  5. ↑ "OJO Labs Home Page". OJO Labs. Retrieved 1 November 2017.
  6. ↑ Bailey, Melissa (April 30, 2012). "Upper State Merchants Band Together". New Haven Independent.
  7. ↑ Stark, Samantha; Hager, Emily B. "Inspiring Activism With an App". New York Times.
  8. ↑ Obama White House (July 3, 2012). "White House Social Enterprise and Opportunity Series: Forum on Citizen-based Innovation". You Tube.
  9. ↑ Shelton, Jim (July 3, 2012). "SeeClickFix founder heads from New Haven to the White House". New Haven Register.
  10. ↑ Harless, William (January 11, 2013). "PBS New Hour Agents of Change".
  11. ↑ Bailey, Melissa (May 7, 2008). "See, Click, Fix". New Haven Independent.
  12. ↑ Joyner, April (December 1, 2010). "Civic Duty to SeeClickFix". Inc.
  13. ↑ Slotnik, Daniel E. (January 3, 2010). "News Sites Dabble With a Web Tool for Nudging Local Officials". New York Times.
  14. ↑ Kennedy, Dan (2013). The Wired City. University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 60–62. ISBN   978-1-62534-005-4.
  15. ↑ "Crunchbase". O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.
  16. ↑ "Crunchbase". Omidyar Network.
  17. ↑ Wauters, Robin (January 11, 2011). "SeeClickFix Gets Seen, Clicked And Funded By Omidyar Network And O'Reilly". TechCrunch.
  18. ↑ MacMillan, Thomas (November 22, 2013). "6 Years On, SeeClickFix Has Changed New Haven". New Haven Independent.
  19. ↑ Kramer, Jack (May 24, 2016). "SeeClickFix Founder Ben Berkowitz Partners With Local Governments". Hartford Courant.
  20. ↑ Hernandez, Esteban L. (October 27, 2016). "New Haven-based SeeClickFix celebrates 3 million citizen issues reported, the majority of them resolved". New Haven Register.
  21. ↑ MacMillan, Thomas (July 2, 2012). "Inside Out Claims 2nd Underpass". New Haven Independent.

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