Ben McBride

National Leader on Belonging, Best-Selling Author, Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity & CEO of Empower Initiative

Ben McBride

National Leader on Belonging, Best-Selling Author, Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity & CEO of Empower Initiative

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Biography

Rev. Ben McBride is a native of San Francisco, spiritual leader, and longtime activist for peace and justice in the Bay Area. In 2008, he relocated his family to a challenging neighborhood in Oakland called the “Kill Zone” to understand and respond to the epidemic of gun violence firsthand. During this tenure, he was instrumental in relaunching Oakland’s first successful iteration of Operation Ceasefire, a data-driven violence reduction strategy, contributing heavily to a nearly 50% reduction in homicides over five years. In 2014, Ben launched the Empower Initiative to support bridging and belonging work nationwide.

Ben is a practitioner at fostering belonging and serves as a national leader in reconstructing public safety systems and gun violence prevention work, including a background of training over 100 law enforcement departments and executives. Ben led PICO California, the largest grassroots community organization in the state, representing 450,000 people across 73 cities, serving as the Co-Director from 2015 to 2020. He founded a national peacemaking initiative to address police-community trust-building during this tenure. He served, at the request of Vice President Kamala Harris, as Co-Chair of California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board, focusing on ending racial profiling in California. Ben was featured in the Sundance Film Festival Award-winning film THE FORCE, concentrating on his peacemaking work.

Ben authored Troubling the Water | The Urgent Work of Radical Belonging (Broadleaf Books), which was released in October 2023. Ben is also an experienced trainer around increasing belonging and civility, working with companies and values-based organizations nationwide. Ben and his wife, Gynelle, have been married for 24 years and have three amazing daughters.They reside in the Bay Area.

Speaker Videos

Keys to Building Bridges: Belonging, Volunteerism and Civic Engagement

Bridging

Belonging Doesn't Mean Inviting Abuse

Rev. Ben McBride with Marcus Harrison Green: Radical Belonging

An Invitation to Become

See Fewer Videos

Speech Topics

Becoming & Belonging

In this keynote address, Ben McBride uses the power of personal stories to inspire listeners to reflect on their own potential for change. These stories, both from historical leaders and Ben's own experiences, serve as a powerful tool to connect with the audience and engage them in the narrative. By weaving in these stories, Ben provides a roadmap for leading differently, one that expands the circle of human concern. With a blend of humor, history, and current events, Ben invites listeners to take a personal and professional step toward bridging differences. He encourages them to co-create a future in their families, schools, communities, and workplaces, even with those they may have perceived as "the other."

Better with Belonging

In this keynote address, Ben McBride instills in the listeners the belief that collective leadership is a more potent force than individual leadership. Ben presents seven transformative shifts in this keynote that students, leaders, and teams can adopt to amplify their collective outcomes and impact, with co-creation and self-care at their core. By sharing personal stories and insights from Empower Initiative's Fostering Belonging Theory, Ben educates the audience on how to engage in collective leadership. He encourages them to bridge differences with colleagues, fostering a culture of productivity and progress within an organization.

Troubling the Water

In this keynote address, Ben McBride urges the listeners to confront the challenges facing the United States, such as polarization and indifference, with a commitment to nonviolent social change. Using current data to illustrate the alarming trend towards violence, Ben guides the audience towards a map for nonviolent social change that broadens the circle of human concern, particularly with space, to include those who profoundly disagree. Drawing from his personal experiences as a religious leader, activist, community organizer, and belonging practitioner, Ben invites the audience to embrace courageous leadership. He encourages them to 'trouble the waters' of our body politic by 'troubling the waters' of our hearts and imagination, bridging across differences and co-creating with those we may perceive as 'the other.