Ben Tanzer

About Ben Tanzer

I AM.I am an Emmy-award winning coach, creative strategist, podcaster, writer, teacher, advisor, mentor, and social worker who has been helping nonprofits, publishers, authors, small business and career changers tell their stories for 30 years.CREATIVE STRATEGIST, TRAINER, ADVISOR, DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR + COACH.I serve as Principal, HEFT Creative Strategies, where I believe in helping human beings and organizations be their best selves through story and have worked with a range of organizations and individuals including Leo Burnett, Content R|S, Koan, FRIENDS, Chapin Hall, LemonAd Stand, Story Jam Studio, Children Trust Michigan, TORANA group, The Center for Advanced Emotional Intelligence, Modern Capital Concepts, DJC Solutions, Inc, and Gardner Philanthropy Consulting, LLC.I\'m also honored to work as a TMI Leadership Trainer for The Montana Institute.TEACHER.I am a Lecturer at Lake Forest College, where I teach LOOP 202: 21st Century Development and Liberal Arts and The Workplace and an Adjunct Professor at Roosevelt University where I teach Composition I and II. I also formerly served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia College Chicago, where I taught Self-Management and Freelancing.NONPROFIT LEADER.I worked at Prevent Child Abuse America from 20••••16, including serving as the Senior Director of Chapter Services and Strategic Communications respectively. While there, I built the organization\'s social media presence, wrote and managed grants from the CDC and Doris Duke, led strategic planning and board retreats, and co-scripted the 2010 Emmy award-winning Ounce of Prevention of Florida “Prevent Child Abuse” public service campaign.PODCASTER.I produce and host This Podcast Will Change Your Life (350+ episodes and counting), which was launched in February 2010, focuses on authors and changemakers from around the country and world, and was named by Elephant Journal as one of \"The 10 Best Podcasts to Help you Change your Life.\" I also produced UPSTATE: The Podcast, a serialized podcast of my short story collection UPSTATE.AUTHOR.My books include the short story collection UPSTATE, the novels Orphans and The Missing, and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. My most recent work, After Hours: Scorsese, Grief and the Grammar of Cinema was released in May 2025 and my new short story collection Human Noise will be released in Spring 2027.STUDENT.I\'m currently a (very) part-time graduate student in Roosevelt University\'s MFA program with a focus on Creative Writing.AND.I help people tell their stories.

Experience

1. Tmi Leadership Trainer

   The Montana Institute

   Jun 2023 — Present · Bozeman, MT, US

   Develop and (co-) lead workshops, trainings and keynotes, as well as provide individual and group coaching, focused on storytelling, personal narrative and branding, transformational leadership, communications, planning and the concepts, which underlie the Science of the Positive and Positive Community Norms theory.

Education

• University at Albany

  Bachelor’s Degree, English Honors and Psychology

  1986 — 1990

• Roosevelt University

  Master of Fine Arts - MFA, Creative Writing

• University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice

  Master’s Degree, Social Work

  1994 — 1996

Skills

• Content Strategy
• Messaging
• Editorial
• Strategic Planning
• Grant Writing
• Presentations
• Program Planning
• Public Speaking
• Blogging
• Traditional Media
• Creative Writing
• Editing
• Content Development
• Facebook
• Lecturing
• Social Media
• Copy Editing