Ben Sherwood was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Dorothy and Richard Sherwood. His mother is a homemaker and arts volunteer, and his late father was a prominent lawyer, civic leader and patron of the arts. Sherwood's older sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood Randall, is a special assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director of European Affairs on the National Security Council.
Sherwood currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife Karen Kehela Sherwood, who is the co-chair of Imagine Films, a division of film and television production company Imagine Entertainment. They have two sons named William Richard Sherwood and Charles Edmund Sherwood.
Education
In 1981, Sherwood graduated from Harvard-Westlake School (then called Harvard School) in Los Angeles. In 1986, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College in Cambridge, MA with an AB degree in American government and history. From 1986 to 1989, as a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford University, he earned masters degrees in British imperial and commonwealth history and development economics.
Sherwood began his career in journalism with internships at KCET public television in Los Angeles in the Summer of 1981, the Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau in the Summer of 1982, and The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather in New York in the Summer of 1983. In 1984-1985, during a year off from college, Sherwood worked for The News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina; the Los Angeles Times Paris bureau and the United Nations Border Relief Operation in Aranyaprathet, Thailand.
From 1989 to 1993, Sherwood worked as an investigative associate producer and producer for ABC News' PrimeTime (then called PrimeTime Live) with hosts Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson. During that time, Sherwood was part of an ABC News team that came under sniper fire in Sarajevo, Bosnia in August 1992. David Kaplan, a veteran ABC News Washington producer, was killed in the incident.
In 1997, Sherwood joined NBC's Nightly News with Tom Brokaw as broadcast producer, then senior producer, and ultimately senior broadcast producer, where he helped guide coverage of the September 11th attacks. Sherwood left NBC News in January 2002. He returned to ABC News in April 2004 as executive producer of the network's Good Morning America. During his tenure at Good Morning America, the program posted the two most successful seasons in its 35 year history and he guided prize-winning coverage of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the devastation of hurricane Katrina, and the presidential election of 2004.
Writing career
Sherwood’s non-fiction work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Parade Magazine, and O Magazine among many publications.
In 1996, Sherwood wrote his first novel, Red Mercury, published under the pseudonym Max Barclay by Dove Books. The story involves a nuclear terror threat at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. President Bill Clinton reportedly "devoured" the book before traveling to Atlanta to attend the Olympics.
In 2000, while working at NBC Nightly News, Sherwood wrote a bestselling novel called The Man Who Ate The 747, published by Bantam Books. The tragicomic tale tells the story of an investigator for a fictional Guinness Book of Records who travels to Superior, Nebraska to authenticate a record attempt involving a man eating a Boeing 747. The record keeper meets an introverted and misguided Nebraska farmer who is ingesting the 747 by grinding parts of the plane into gritty dust. By consuming the plane, the farmer hopes to prove the size and scope of his love for a woman who lives in the small town. The book is being developed as a feature film and musical.
In 2004, Sherwood published The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, which follows a young man's journey between the worlds of life and death, and explores his bonds with loved ones in both. The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud was made into a feature film starring Zac Efron, directed by Burr Steers, produced by Marc Platt, and released from Universal Pictures on July 30, 2010 under the new title Charlie St. Cloud.. Both books have been translated into more than 15 languages around the world.
In January 2009, Sherwood's first non-fiction book, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life, was published by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. The Survivors Club explores human survival in all its forms. The book became a New York Times bestseller and has been published in more than 15 languages. Michael Joseph,an imprint of Penguin, published The Survivors Club in Britain in June 2009.
Internet Entrepreneur
In January 2009, expanding upon the themes of his most recent book, Sherwood launched a Website called www.TheSurvivorsClub.org, an online resource center and support network for people facing all manners of adversity. The Survivors Club Website is a social enterprise dedicated to helping people survive and thrive in the face of every kind of adversity including health, financial, family and extreme challenges.
In August 2010, The Survivors Club Website re-launched as part of the Hearst Digital Network, a division of the Hearst Corporation.
Community Activities
Sherwood is a member of the board of directors of City Year (Los Angeles) and a member of the advisory board of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, DC. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
