Ben Wilson - CEO at Color of Sound

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom pod. We have Ben Wilson with us. He's a nonprofit board member and founder, uh, nonprofit board member at Centrum Foundation. I see Port Townsend Film Festival as well. Also CEO, founder of Color of Sound. So Ben, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.

Hey Charles, thank you for having me. Uh, Yeah, you know, I retired from a 35-year career in digital healthcare 2 years ago. And during that career, I was an early employee at a company called BabyCenter, which is still the number 1 website for new and expectant parents, and was an executive there. And we sold that to Johnson Johnson. I also ran a spin-off of BabyCenter called Consumer Health Interactive, which we sold to CVS. I worked at Intel, the computer company, in their health and life sciences group for 10 years and ran the mobile health device strategy globally, and I got to travel the world sort of promoting the use of mobile devices in healthcare. And also founded a company. The last company I was involved with was Together Senior Health, which I helped to start and was a digital platform for people with Alzheimer's and dementia and their caregivers. So, yeah, so decided that I'd done all I wanted to do in technology and retired from that career, but then quickly decided to start Color of Sound, and Color of Sound's mission is to improve the lives of people of color through art and media. And we have produced the Dark and Tender series, which is an award-winning series. We're selected for 9 international film festivals with those films and won best documentary short at one of those film festivals. And Uh, but, and, and now we have a bunch of projects, um, mostly with that, that are so centered around social justice, uh, for people of color. And, uh, and it's been a really great, um, run for us and just really fulfilling for me and interesting. And so, um, that's where I've been focused.

And you did like a decade plus, uh, well, let's, before we get to your business dev background. Let's start with your first company, right? Um, founding president at Consumer Health Interactive, spin-off of BabyCenter and acquired by CVS. What was that in 1999?

Yeah, so that was, uh, my— one of my first was— I think it was my first job after, after graduate school. Uh, I went to Berkeley to get an MBA and a master's in public health, and And, you know, it's the late '90s, dot-coms were going crazy and I wanted to jump into one. And so I wanted to use my healthcare background and business background to help launch a company. So I joined BabyCenter. And then during that time, we discovered this need in the market for health plans to develop consumer wellness websites under their own brand. Because health plans don't have a good relationship with their members, they you only reach out to your health plan when there's something wrong, right? Like if a claim is not paid or you didn't get your card or if there are any issues at all, but otherwise you just don't even think about your health plan. So they wanted to build a better, more positive relationship. Having a baby is like the most positive experience you can have in healthcare. And so sort of focusing around that, but then expanding to other areas of health. And so we were able to sell that product to about 13 plans nationally, a lot of Blues plans. We had a partnership with the National Blues Office, and so that went really well. And so we eventually sold that to what was at the time called Caremark, but Caremark was acquired by CVS. Caremark is a is a pharmacy benefit management company that manages the pharmacy side of your health benefits. And, and so then eventually they became part of CVS.

So let me get this straight. Straight out of grad school, you started a business that was acquired in 2 years? I still can't wrap my mind around that one.

Well, at the time, I had a lot of business school classmates at Berkeley that were, you know, they started companies while we were in grad school and sold those. So it was just a crazy time, you know, in terms of the market and in terms of, you know, larger companies looking for innovation from dot-com companies, 'cause it was, I remember when we were at BabyCenter, we were acquired by eToys, and eToys had a valuation which was, I think, 10 times higher than Toys "R" Us, even though Toys "R" Us had stores nationally, had this big brand, and eToys had one warehouse and a website. And so, It was just a crazy time in the market. But also, I think—

Was it like cheesy money or—

For me, yeah. You know, I grew up, you know, my mom was a librarian, a single mom. And I had a very modest upbringing. And, you know, I had scholarships to college. And I had worked some after college before graduate school. But suddenly, yeah, I had wealth after that. And so bought a house in Menlo Park and was able to raise my family there, was able to travel the world and take nice family vacations in Hawaii and other places. And so, yeah. It was life-changing for me. But also I realized that, you know, I'd always dreamed of having more money and be able to do the things that money enables you to do. But I realized once I had the funds that it isn't everything, you know? And so if you're happy and then you get some money, Uh, that's good, but it doesn't solve your, you know, your, your problems or your fears or your anxieties in life overall, right?

And Berkeley, Stanford, this is like very high V. You, you got through it through your grades, right? Your mom was a librarian, so you must have been like studying pretty much all the time.

I was, yeah, I was very good at school. Uh, I was highly motivated. I also had the privilege of growing up in St. Helena, Napa Valley, which is a fairly affluent community, even though it's a small agricultural town. But we had really good teachers. And so, yeah, I was able to build friendships with my teachers and my principal. And so, Yeah, I— it, it's a strange thing about our educational system that you have to excel between sophomore and junior years of high school in order to get into college. And, you know, so the timing has to be right in terms of when you're doing your, your best. And anyway, I would— and I was involved, I was a musician, and I was involved in a lot of I was always interested in many things. And so I think that helped too to get me into Stanford. And I just was a very unique person in that I had this combination of my, one side of my family, I descended from enslaved peoples here in the US. And then the other side of my family were immigrants from Ukraine. And Jewish. And so I just had this very unique background that I think made me attractive to a place like Stanford.

Right, because you must have been like one of the few Black dudes at that time, right, on the campus. Like, but it's like one of the most liberal places, one of the most liberal universities. So how— what was the climate back then?

Yeah, yeah, Stanford had about, uh, 10% of the people were Black. And, uh, so yeah, there weren't very many people, and there was fewer of them where I grew up.

That's a lot, 10%. I, I would have thought like 1%. I'm not sure why.

Yeah, well, it's, but it's below, you know, the, uh, the, the numbers, the national numbers, uh, which are I think at the time like 12%. But they, I think Stanford was trying hard to create a diverse student body. That said, where I grew up in St. Helena, there was even fewer people. You know, I think we had 105 people in my class, and there was 2 of us in my class in high school. So it was more like 2% there. So it was something I was pretty used to, actually.

Was that during the Peter Thiel and David Sacks days, you know, like where these guys were fighting like against liberalism, like very conservative guys.

Yeah.

So the fall that I started at Stanford, in that in November, President Reagan was elected. And so that was sort of a turning point. But it was, it was after I'd already started college. And so, but I was surprised. At the time of the number of conservative people that were in my freshman dorm. We had like our own little local election and Reagan won in our dorm as well. And so, but that was the start of the Reagan revolution and that carried through the Bush years. So yeah, all the time I was in college, things were moving towards a more conservative environment, although you know, that, uh, Reagan and Bush would have been considered very liberal compared to our current administration.

Yeah. And just to follow the timeline here, so you had your exit. After that, you went to work for a long time in biz dev, right? Uh, 10 years at Intel and then Citrix and all these companies. How did that feel? You know, like, um, was, was it challenging roles, or did, uh, corporations got your soul extracted?

Well, Intel recruited me saying that they were— they had a what they called an entrepreneurial role. They were going to create a company within a company, and so they were recruiting entrepreneurs in healthcare, uh, for the role. And, and at the time, my, my kids were young and, and I wanted to create a little bit more stability at home. So I thought this, working for Intel would do that. The reality of it was that I ended up having an international role and traveling a lot because of that. And so the downside was I was away from my family. The upside was that I got to travel the world and go to places, China and in Australia and South America and all over Europe. And so, you know, I have over a million miles on United and I always loved to travel. I love, you know, part of the reason why the role was good for me is because when I was a kid, my mom, even though we didn't have a lot of money, we would still, we're able to travel and like with backpacks in Europe and, And so I was always exposed to different cultures and so forth, and that enabled me to play this biz dev role internationally because I was always embraced learning about different cultures and different people. And, and so I enjoyed that quite a bit.

What prompted you to go like full all-in to nonprofits?

You know, I— my mom was always, you know, like a public servant working in, uh, working in libraries. She was also a teacher. I'd always been sort of politically, uh, very socially oriented. I started a Social Democratic club in high school, um, always, um So, and, and, and part of the reason I went into healthcare is because it is sort of a balance between a more business focus and a more public service focus. And there's sort of two sides to healthcare because it's, you know, the government so involved in the delivery of healthcare. So, so I've always wanted to do something where I was of service and And so I, in retirement, I really had the opportunity to do what I wanted to do. And I also wanted to do something specifically to support people of color. I had tons of challenges because of racism as a kid and living in a mostly white town, got called all kinds of names and and there are just all these biases against me. And then even working in technology, I could count on one hand the number of times there were other Black people in the room when at meetings and so forth, and also faced some racism in my career. And so I will, in my semi-retirement, I decided that I really wanted to focus on helping other people of color to face those challenges and to learn, you know, from my experience. And so starting Color of Sound was sort of an opportunity to do that. I'd also served on nonprofit boards and enjoyed that work even when I was still working in my tech career. So, and And so I wanted to continue to do that full-time.

Dark and Tender was a pretty good documentary, right? Like, I've done some therapy on myself, like alternative therapies, right? I think I saw some psychedelics. I tried ayahuasca or something like that in the documentary. What was the idea behind it and what was the, the impact of the documentary?

Yeah, so, um, I met Aaron Johnson, who is the founder of the Chronically Untouched Project, which is what The Dark and Tender is about. And, uh, and, and so the Chronically Untouched Project is about how especially Black men don't receive tender platonic touch from their fathers, brothers, and friends, and how that impacts our mental health and nervous system regulation. And so, and how Aaron is working with mostly Black men to help them through this process to overcome the impact of the lack of touch and intimacy. But it's really, it's not only about touch. Touch is sort of the most tangible part of it, but also it's about teaching men about listening and empathy and some of these softer skills that we're taught not to have. And we recognize that this is an issue for most men, actually, especially American men. It's not as much of an international issue as it is an American issue. So So that's what it was about. And we've done two films in the Dark and Tender series. We had the original Dark and Tender, which sort of talked to the origin story and what is the Croc the Undertouch project. And then Dark and Tender: The Big Island is our second film. And that was more about an immersive experience where you get to actually see what the workshops are and be part of the workshops. So So yeah, so the impact has been that, you know, one, we've screened at 9 different international film festivals. So people have been seeing these films around the globe. We also stream the film on Kinema, and also local nonprofits can do a screening of our film through this platform so that we don't have to be there and they can access the film, they can share some of the revenue with us, they get a lot of educational information and Q&A questions and so forth. So we've been able, you know, we've done hundreds of screenings, we've done probably about 35 events where it centers around the films. And then we've done probably 20 workshops to accompany that. So there's been a lot of impact. People, you know, even our social media presence has had an impact in terms of people being able to see portions of the film and hear from Aaron specifically about the work. So Yeah, so the impact's been pretty broad and we've been really excited about that. And it's also helped my organization, Color Sound, to really narrow in on how we can really be impactful going forward. We, you know, so we've developed a model basically where we work with social justice organizations to become documentary filmmakers. So we, we teach them to fish so that they, we, We have like a Documentary Filmmaking 101 classes for them, which we help them to access equipment either at a low cost or for free. We train them on using the equipment. We train them on being able to edit their films. And we talk to them about how to get distribution and to promote their films. So, and so we, you know, Color Sound is now working with two high school students from immigrant families.

We—

they— these are rising seniors, and one of them, their family is from Antigua. The other one is from Oaxaca, Mexico, which I know you know well, Charles. And so they're— and it turns out both of them are traveling to their country of origin this summer. And so we've got them all ready to interview their grandma and their family and as they travel this summer, and then we're going to help them to edit their films and screen those in the fall. So we're doing that. And then we also have a project around Indigenous stories that we're starting as well. So the Dark and Tender series has really helped us to think about where we can really add value as an organization, and it seems to have some legs, so we're really excited about that.

And what's next for you? What do you want to accomplish this year?

What do I want to accomplish this year? You know, we had primarily worked on the— with the Croc Tender Touch project and the Dark and Tender series, and so this year for Color of Sound, we want to diversify the groups that we're working with and not just work, you know, not just work with Black people, but work with Indigenous folks, Latino folks. And so that's really exciting for me to sort of expand our reach, expand the sorts of folks that we're working with, different backgrounds. I mean, for me, it's just really fun to be able to learn about these people's stories and enable people to tell their stories because from their perspective, and then to teach them how to continue to do that even when we're not involved. So I just find that super gratifying.

Well, thanks for being on, Ben. Where can people find out more about you?

We are at colorofsound.co is our website, so not .com but .co. So colorofsound.co, uh, and, or you can email me at ben@colorofsound.org.

There you go. So that was Ben Wilson and Charles Cormier for another Founder