Benjamin Wagner is a consultant, coach, creative and founder of Essential Industries Incorporated, a boutique consulting firm specializing in individual and organizational transformation, communication and collaboration.

He collects, develops and shares stories and strategies about transformation, and provides Executive Coaching, Facilitation (workshops, retreats, conferences) and Keynote Speaking (conferences, events, etc).

As a consultant, coach and creative, Benjamin leverages thirty years of experience to help people and businesses create transformation, culture and community.

From his half-decade helping launch Facebook’s Journalism Project globally and his tenure transforming MTV News, to his award-winning PBS documentary, “Mister Rogers & Me,” and podcast, "Friends & Neighbors," Benjamin's focus is the essential nature of our shared human experience.

This Week's Podcast:

Kim Thai

Listen Now

Benjamin Wagner is a consultant, coach, creative and founder of Essential Industries Incorporated, a boutique consulting firm specializing in individual and organizational transformation, communication and collaboration.

He collects, develops and shares stories and strategies about transformation, and provides Executive Coaching, Facilitation (workshops, retreats, conferences) and Keynote Speaking (conferences, events, etc).

As a consultant, coach and creative, Benjamin leverages thirty years of experience to help people and businesses create transformation, culture and community.

From his half-decade helping launch Facebook’s Journalism Project globally and his tenure transforming MTV News, to his award-winning PBS documentary, “Mister Rogers & Me,” and podcast, "Friends & Neighbors," Benjamin's focus is the essential nature of our shared human experience.

This Week's Podcast:

Kim Thai

Listen Now

May 10 2022

Kim Thai: Get Free

The last time I remember really talking with my friend and former MTV colleague, Kim Thai, we were sitting in a nondescript production trailer outside of the Barclay Center at the 2014 Video Music Awards.  Kim, who, at the time, managed social media for the channel’s biggest shows, and I, who ran MTV News, often…
View Post →

Apr 27 2022

Kelli Rae Powell: Hope & The High Road

I left Facebook one year ago, and have spent the better part of my time since trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. Pre-pandemic, I worked at a high-stakes, high-pressure job at a company under scrutiny, in an industry under duress, on a planet on fire. I was on the road and in…
View Post →

Apr 21 2022

Jeff Domanski: It Gets Easier

In 2014, during a window between my high-pressure MTV News job and higher-pressure Facebook one, I visited my dear friend, Jeff Domanski, in his Hudson Highlands, home some 75 miles of New York City. We kayaked and swam in the river, and watched a bald eagle devour its catch from just a few boat lengths away. The…
View Post →

Apr 13 2022

Matthew Tousignant: Here’s The Ticket

Matthew Tousignant and I have been hiking the rocky trails of Valley Forge National Park since we were fifteen. Tous holds degrees from Harvard University and the California Institute of Integral Studies. As a Breema Practitioner and Instructor, he combines hands-on bodywork with somatic psychology to connect people to their unique potential as human beings. When…
View Post →

Mar 30 2022

Kathy Kim: Sweeping The Clouds Away

Like the 80 million other Americans who’ve watched since the show’s inception, I grew up wondering how to get to Sesame Street. When I discovered that my friend and one-time Mister Rogers & Me researcher, Kathy Kim, was behind the show’s first Asian American Muppet. Ji-Young, I thought, “Of course!”  And when she popped up in the studio wearing a…
View Post →

Mar 22 2022

Mister Rogers & Us, Part II

For years, Tim and Amy have been sentinels, slightly-elder spiritual siblings ever-ready to provide me wise council. I have called on them confounded, confused, and crestfallen, exuberant, and downright giddy. They hold space for me to be whoever I need to be: weak or strong, brave or stupid. Which seems to me to be the…
View Post →
View All Posts