A resident of Nelson Bay, Ben spent 33 years of his early working life in the RAAF, serving overseas and at a variety of Australian mainland locations. His final appointment was as Commandant of the RAAF Staff College in Canberra.

On leaving the RAAF in 1998, he worked for 9 years as a Principal Consultant with a Canberra-based consultancy firm providing advice to senior management within Federal and State government departments and industry, in Australia, Aotearoa NZ and the US, on change and project management.

Ben was politically active in Australia for several years, running for seven Federal, state and council elections and from 2008-2012 was a councillor and Deputy Mayor of Kiama Municipal Council on the South Coast of NSW.

Since then he has been a company managing director and subsequently a trustee of a sustainable living land development project in Aotearoa New Zealand. He and his wife Sharon moved to Nelson Bay in 2017 and are involved as volunteers with Marine Rescue, St Vincent de Paul, Orange Sky, ORRCA, Port Stephens Koalas as well as TRRA.

Ben was the TRRA Inc president until the 2023 term.