”Ben’s Journey to Becoming”

Ben McBride is here because an enslaved African woman saw a future beyond the life she was forced into. That’s cathedral thinking — envisioning something beautiful you’ll never see yourself.

A fourth-generation Pentecostal preacher and direct descendent of the Jim Crow era, Ben tells us how love drove him out of his comfort zone and into a life of activism and why we all have to give up power and privilege to create a world where everyone belongs.
 
BIO: Ben McBride, Empower Initiative founder, and CEO, is a spiritual leader and longtime activist for social change. He was instrumental in Operation Ceasefire’s violence reduction programs in Oakland, and he was co-director of Faith in Action California, where he represented more than 450,000 people in efforts to dismantle structural inequities and face white supremacy head-on.

Today, he leads Empower Initiative full-time, personally delivering keynote addresses and spearheading private consulting engagements in service of EI’s mission to create a world where everyone belongs.