Ben Speggen

Editorial Director, Our Towns Civic Foundation; Vice President, JES; Contributing Editor, Erie Reader; Senior Editor, Ethos Copywriting

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Ben Speggen serves as the Editorial Director at Our Towns Civic Foundation, where he helps to tell the stories of, and connect, the people and places driving local-level community renewal throughout the country.

Ben is the Vice President of the Jefferson Educational Society, a think tank for community progress based in Erie, Pennsylvania. There, he oversees the growth and development of the JES’s annual Global Summit, a conference designed to bring big ideas to smaller communities. Prior, he directed the think tank’s Civic Leadership Academy and year-round programming, and helped launch the JES’s countywide satellite programming.

He is also a Contributing Editor at the Erie Reader, the region’s alt. weekly publication, which he helped found as the publication’s first Managing Editor, a post he held from 2011 to 2015. He keeps his copyediting skills honed, working as a Senior Editor for Ethos Copywriting, tackling anything from social media posts to blogs and beyond.

He currently serves as the chair of the Board of Directors of L’Arche Erie, a nonprofit serving and supporting those with intellectual and development disabilities.

In the past, he’s hosted a community-affairs program at WQLN Public Media, Erie’s NPR/PBS affiliate station, and has taught writing and literature at the college level.

Born in Morgantown, West Virginia, Ben grew up in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and is a proud graduate of the Carmichaels Area School District. The son of a coal miner and a healthcare assistant, he went on to become the first in his family to attend college, studying literature, history, and journalism at Gannon University, where he also earned his master’s degree.