The Full Story
Ben Chostner
I was elected as a Precinct 9 Town Meeting Member because I want to help Brookline thrive for the next 20 years and beyond.
I have two children in our public schools, and my youngest will graduate from Brookline High in 2040. I am extremely motivated to keep what makes Brookline great – our parks, our schools, our safety, our walkability, our diversity – over that entire time period. We face some challenges ahead in keeping our town thriving, and I’m particularly interested in and capable of helping with our fiscal planning, both revenues and expenditures. Schools, parks, public safety, infrastructure – these things all require investment, and costs are going up rapidly and more than our revenue is currently expanding. I’m excited to jump in to both help manage cost increases and importantly to also identify more sources of revenue.
My Professional Life
As a kid I loved math, physics, and cars so it was natural to study Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois. I quickly became fascinated with the business challenges that arise with innovative technology and studied for an MBA at Harvard Business School.
Over my 20 year career I have worked as a business strategy consultant, tech startup employee, director in a large public company, and now as an independent advisor and consultant. In each of those experiences I have seen the transformative power of deep, detailed analysis paired with broad constituent input and simple and concise storytelling to drive change. This is what I hope to bring to Brookline.
Learn more about me on LinkedIn
My Personal Life
My wife & I always wanted to find a thriving, walkable community where we can send our kids to K-12 public schools. After considering several places around the U.S. we concluded Brookline offered the best combination of schools, parks, walkability, safety, diversity, and community.
We purchased a home built in 1895 near Coolidge Park and embarked on a deep energy retrofit to prepare our home for the next 100 years and beyond. We loved the exterior and kept it almost entirely the same while adding insulation, replacing all gas appliances with electric, and adding solar panels and backup batteries that help power the neighborhood through a virtual power plant program on summer evenings.
My daughter attends FRR and I coach her and a few friends in Lego Robotics (First Lego League) once a week. My son is in preschool and loves to help me cook, one of my favorite hobbies.
