About Ben

Benjamin Lester is a freelance journalist and an instructor with the National Outdoor Leadership School. Before he began working with NOLS, he served as bosun aboard the Amistad, and wrote about science for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Science magazine, in Washington, DC, and Cosmos magazine, in Sydney, Australia.

Benjamin graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006 with a BS in Ecology and Evolution. Between high school and enrolling at UCSC, he spent 18 months building and sailing on the twin 110-foot brigantines Irving Johnson and Exy Johnson. The Johnsons are operated as sail training vessels for at-risk youth by the Los Angeles Maritime Institute.

He is a native of South Pasadena, CA, and attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where he focused on photography. His photographs have appeared in Science, COSMOS, the NOLS newspaper The Leader, and at Alpinist.com. His writing has appeared in COSMOS, Cosmos Online, G: The Green Lifestyle Magazine, Science, ScienceNOW, Xconomy.com, and the website and Bulletin of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Resume (February 2010)

Outdoor Resume (February 2010)