Growing up, Lens + Line founder Ben Hess was a nerdy, gawky only child, complete with thick framed Coke-bottle glasses. He escaped into fiction (thank you Hardy Boys, Three Investigators, and Encyclopedia Brown) and film (props to George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Alfred Hitchcock).

That immersion into imagination and story led him to the stage in college, acting in productions of Moliere, Shakespeare, and Neil Simon. Goodbye glasses, hello contacts!

After leveraging his acting training into incredible global success in sales and marketing communications early in his career, Ben returned to creative roots as a corporate storyteller - producing, writing, directing, and editing. He's since delivered award-winning work across industries and organizations including medical solutions (PulsePoint Foundation, Zoll, and Intuitive Surgical), enterprise software (Autodesk, Elementum, and Intuit), and consumer products and services (Broadway San Jose, HP, and Logitech).

His storytelling also included the non-profit sector through work with Stanford's Graduate School of Business and their Center for Social Innovation, including the Acumen Fund, Habitat For Humanity, INTED, and Volunteer Match.

A recent alumni of Terra.do’s Climate Change: Learning for Action cohort, Ben's launched Lens + Line to amplify solutions addressing society's pressing issues with an emphasis on how we live and work.