Ben Gilbarg - Social Entrepreneur, Co-Founder Steam The Streets

Social entrepreneur and co-founder of Steam the Streets, Ben Gilbarg speaks passionately about inspiring and activating underrepresented youth to pursue science, technology, engineering, arts and math career pathways through impactful media and music.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome back to What's at Risk.I'm Mike Christian. Informing their education based
youth organization in twenty sixteen, AngelDiaz and fellow co founder, professional videographer
Ben Gilberg, both of New Bedford, Massachusetts, found a way to give

(00:27):
back to their city, exposing localstudents to lesser known ironing career pathways and
trying to raise their awareness of theboundless possibilities for their future. They believe
if you can see it, youcan be it, so they make it
their mission to provide information, exposure, and inspiration. They produce and curate

(00:51):
content that features stories of bipop folksin steam careers and informative programming that decreases
the space between and underserved youth andin demand careers. Ben and Angel help
them see themselves in these careers.Hello everyone. We're honored to have Ben
Gilberg, who is a social entrepreneurutilizing media and creative passion to make an

(01:15):
impact. Co founder of Steam theStreets, he inspires and activates underrepresented youths
to pursue science, technology, engineering, arts and math careers. Ben,
thanks so much for being with us. Really appreciate having you here tonight.
Really glad to be here Mike.Thanks, Maybe a good place to start
would be just for you to tellour listeners a bit about your background and

(01:38):
your life's journey to this point.So I think my background can best be
described by a confluence of a fewthings. So my parents, first of
all, shout out to my parents. They brought me up a New Bedford,
mass and I couldn't ask for agreater upbringing. But also their background

(01:59):
as to this since like the VietnamWar era and doing a lot in the
Beford and Fall River community really implantedthat activism part in me. And then
hip hop that's the second thing.And hip hop, I you know,
my next door neighbor Mike, putme on to a hip hop culture when

(02:20):
I was a kid and just reallybecame a lover of the music and culture
and had artists I was listening toin high school that were just giving me
so much meet in terms of likeeducation and content and a lot more than
many of the teachers I had inhigh school. And then the third part

(02:42):
was a video and kind of thislove for video production. I started making
videos as a kid and then hadwas lucky enough to have the opportunity at
New Bedford High school to take avideo production class and really fell in love
with that medium, especially of puttingtogether stories and editing, and then all
all those three really came together whenI went out to college. I had

(03:06):
a few really good professors in collegeat UMass Amherst and communication and really they
helped open me up and open myeyes to how things are interconnected socially and
politically throughout the world, and howmedia plays a role, and really started
using media and music and activism andbringing all those together. I ended up

(03:32):
co founding an organization called Third EyeYouth Empowerment when I was twenty years old,
which is still alive today in NewBedford, and from there was producing
a TV show as part of thatcalled put Out the Word, which ultimately
spread through twenty million homes. Andthat was a hip hop TV show,
right, really showcasing the culture andprogressive elements of the culture. And then

(03:55):
through that experience that was really asenior journey of doing this incredible mix of
content creation, event production. Weused to put on a big hip hop
festival called the Third Eye Open Communityforums, very active. We were mentoring

(04:16):
and doing a lot of youth developmentand just lots and lots of things that
intertwined those three elements, but alsomarketing and social justice and all these cool
things which I call like the stewof experiences that I got to have that
really just is very unique. Right, And fast forward thirteen years, I

(04:42):
moved on went back to school toget my masters, and when I did
that, I started a company calledBig Picture Anthems. Really taking the elements
that I was doing with the firstorganization, I started Third Eye of using
music to send a ment, usingvideo to send a message, and working
with young people and young powerful artists, right, And from then that led

(05:09):
to Steam the Streets. So that'sthe short story, but those are really
highlight points in my background. We'lldig into some of those aspects of that
short story. Seeing the Streets startedin twenty sixteen, and you've served over
forty six hundred youth directly since then. What inspired you to start it?
With co creator Angel Diaz, soreally started hearing about the diversity gap and

(05:34):
the technology sector around twenty fourteen twentyfifteen, that there wasn't enough people of
color in tech, right, andthis was a crisis. But then also
hearing about not enough people to fillthe jobs that were available primarily in computing
and computer science, and at thetime with you know, some of the

(05:58):
things we were doing big picture anthems, and it was really about public outreach,
right, It was really about sendingthis message. A lot of people
were watching our videos, were sharingour videos. We were involving young artists,
and my thought was like, canwe use our method of public outreach

(06:18):
that we've been developing to help tryto solve this problem. How could we
get this message out to the nation. Really was the original vision, and
also part of the original vision waspartnering with big time hip hop artists that
were also like, you know,our dream was will I Am and a

(06:39):
Janelle Monet who had some interest insteam and them in these different fields.
We started doing in school programming,creating a bunch of content, creating profile
videos. We worked with one school, Carnie Academy in Bedford High School,
working with the fifth grade students primarilyand had just an amazing impact on them,

(07:04):
you know, doing our assemblies,but also bringing guest speakers from different
career fields and doing after school programming, and right then and there we're like,
we're onto something. And so weboth have this passion for seeing young
people not left behind, being ableto rise up, being self sufficient,

(07:25):
and that you know, steam theStreets really incorporates all of our strengths to
try to achieve that goal. Let'stalk a little bit about the videos,
because you've been so inspired by thatfor a long time. In addition to
integrating the hip hop music into thosevideos, you referenced Third Eye Unlimited,
and I think there was a videothat you made at that point in time,

(07:46):
maybe ten or twelve years ago calledget Outside and Move. I saw
that video, and I believe MichelleObama actually put it on her website and
used it to promote her health initiatives. She espoused this first Lady tell us
about that video. It's pretty cool. So that video actually came about from
a partnership with at the time ThirdEye and then New Bedford National Historical Whaling

(08:11):
National Park where Frank Barrows, whosince has moved on to a national position.
We were both kind of grew uptogether in New Bedford and he said
he's said, hey, I lovewhat you're doing with Third Eye. Let's
try to do some things together.So we ended up starting a program called
the APP, which stand for YouthAmbassador Program and what it was was using

(08:33):
the kind of model that we haddeveloped a third eye, which is young
people writing music to send a messageand make these great music videos that included
that projected their voice. How whatif we applied that to national park themes
and kind of national park in nationalissues? Right, and so get Outside

(08:56):
and Move is actually one of tenmusic videos we did together over a long
span. But that particular video kindof our part of our mission was like,
Okay, you know, Michelle Obama'sdoing this great stuff. We have
this idea, this could be theanthem for let's move dot gov. Right,
And it ended up she did awhole article on it. It was

(09:20):
labeled a success story. I rememberit was front page of the New Bedford
Standard Times after it came out,and that just led to so much opportunities
and really I think validated our model. Yeah, and it also integrated a
health theme into it for young peoplethat was really beneficial during and after COVID
when everybody became so isolated in theirhouses looking at their iPhones constantly instead of

(09:46):
getting out and moving. That's right, So sticking with the video theme just
for a second big picture anthems,is that still an organization that you're involved
with. Yes, we would liketo call it a sister entity of Steaming
the Streets. Got it And asI was doing a little research for this
interview, you pointed me to thecase studies that you had and they included

(10:07):
some projects both for New Bedford andGreen for All. Tell our listeners a
bit about those projects and what theyentailed and how they ended up. So
our model with big picture anthems sawa lot of success, especially between twenty
sixteen and twenty twenty, you know, really combining a few different elements,

(10:31):
video outreach, music, message stendingsimilar themes from the other pieces of my
career. One example is the fuelchange campaign we did. So we partnered
with, like you said, Greenfor All, and they had, you
know, a national campaign they weretrying to get off the ground to inspire

(10:54):
more clean school buses and trucks,you know, because tailpipe pollution is such
a big problem environmentally and such abig public health problem, and so they
hired us to create this fuel changecampaign. And what we did, which
was new to us at the time, is we started a national challenge.

(11:18):
So a lot of times you'll seethese social media challenges where a prompt is
put up there and you can writea rap or write a song and then
post it on your social media anduse the hashtag, and it's a way
to kind of replicate the reach andwe ended up getting I believe we got
around fifty artists from all over thecountry submitting a verse. That process was

(11:41):
amazing because you're hearing all these differentvoices articulate the problem and the solution in
different ways, in different style.And then we had the hard job of
picking two finalists to actually be onthe final music video, and the final
video with the help of at thetime Van Jones and some other celebrities,
it reached five hundred thousand views aboutseventy two hours, and it was more

(12:09):
than the views. It actually helpedGreen Feroll sign up more than one thousand
people for their campaign and led toone hundred and thirty new volunteers. So
this form of music that many weresaying, oh, that's hip hop,
what is it good for? Isactually like a great way to not only
send a message, but to reallyreach people. I've recently seen a quote

(12:31):
from you and I'll read it.My grandfather was the head of the math
department at Stanford university, and evenwith that, I felt totally disenfranchised from
things like algebra in school. Sowhat are the underlying reasons that black and
brown kids just don't get the rightinformation to make meaningful career decisions and really

(12:54):
dig into those elements of education thatare in so important to move forward.
Well, I think it's a largeonion that you just keep peeling. And
there's so many reasons, but Ican I can talk about some. I
think, you know, looking atalgebra, for one, this is a
subject that is I describe it asa gatekeeper subject. Right. If you

(13:16):
can't do well with algebra and Algebratwo and subsequently the classes that come after
it, you are essentially shut offfrom a lot of STEM careers and a
lot of careers in general. Right. And here we have this subject which
is so important being taught pretty muchthe same way it's been taught since I

(13:39):
was at New Bedford High School inthe nineties, right, which totally missed
me and was I was not ableto be engaged in it. My brother,
who was younger than me, wasn'table to be engaged in it.
So there's there's one reason, islike the teaching aspects and how subjects are
taught are not often connected to realworld careers, real world you know,

(14:05):
the relevancy of this content is lacking. So if I'm a student and I'm
sitting there and I'm like, okay, I understand I need to get a
good grade, but like, whyam I using this? Why am I
learning this? When will I everuse this in life? And I've never
heard in all my years of math, Oh, you can use algebra in

(14:28):
architecture or software or plumbing or youknow, radiology and all these different careers
you can use it, and youcan use it in a ton, So
the relevance is lacking. There's alsoa disconnect between the academic components, and
it's like things are in silos,right and instead of connecting them and making

(14:50):
these connections for students, it's oftentimesseparate. So, you know, we
have a lack of law lot offolks going into STEM majors that there are
many reasons for that. One partof it is that they don't know what
careers are out there and therefore don'thave a vision for themselves. You know,

(15:11):
there was a study done a fewyears back in National Study with I
believe around two thousand youth and whenasked if you know, what do you
want to be as an adult,fifty percent of team selected the same ten
jobs, and twenty five percent couldn'tname a career they wanted to be.
Their careers that we have in ourapp and our website that most adults haven't

(15:33):
heard of, let alone teenagers.And this is all in the context of
something you said earlier that there's anestimated four million jobs in steam fields.
Now steam is science, technology,engineering, math, and the arts,
and these jobs are going unfilled becauseof the fact that the training is just
not relevant enough to get these youngpeople interested in those fields of study.

(15:56):
There's over ten million unfilled jobs totallyin this country, right and so industry,
there's so many industries out there thatneed more people, and they're like
racking their brains trying to how wecan get young people interested in aware and
I'm like reading this and to saythis is what we literally do. You
know, We've been trying to buildthese bridges to careers, and it's through

(16:19):
reaching youth where they're at and reachingthem in a way that is not corny,
is not boring, is not dull, is engaging, is diverse,
as representative of bipoch populations and differentfolks who have different career paths and really
humanizing those careers. This is agood segue into you telling our listeners about

(16:42):
your app that's been in the makingfor a long time and is now out
there in a meaningful way. Canyou talk a bit about the app and
the opportunities that it hopefully opens upfor these young people? For sure.
So when we were working with NewBedford Public Schools at the time when COVID
hit, we were working with threeschools. So we started with one and

(17:03):
we were working with three, andthen we just kind of were shut off
because there's this pandemic and they,you know, administrator to trying to figure
out how to how to go forward, and we took a step back and
we said, how can we replicateus, Like we're having this great impact
in three schools, how can wescale us up to the to the rest

(17:26):
of the country. And and itwent back to our initial vision of having
more of a national impact, rightAnd so an app or a platform was
always an idea we had that wetried to pursue before COVID, but COVID
really gave us that a good excuseto go back in the lab and really

(17:47):
say hey, we can develop somethingthat can really help students and help schools.
So the app is it's a freeapp. First of all, it's
mobile for Android and Apple. Itfeatures currently ten careers and growing. So
we have career modules everything from softwareengineering to mental health field, to digital

(18:11):
marketing, to data and analysis toUIUX design, so really a breath of
kind of steam careers. And eachcareer module features two videos. One is
a career profile, which a relatablestory of an underrepresented person in that field.

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So the students go through a userexperience where it's like they see this
story, they answer questions. Atthe end they get points, there's a
leaderboard, and then they go tothe next video, which is hosted by
Angel djong Helli, which is adeeper dive into that field. Okay,
now you saw the relatable story.You get this kind of download of Hey,

(18:56):
here's the demand of this career,Here's how many jobs are out there,
Here's what it looks like in thereal world. Here's a career path.
And then each of those episodes endswith a motivational rap by djong Helly
kind of like hey, you cando this. And then after they answer
some more questions. They finished themodule, they unlock the free first steps,

(19:18):
which is essentially vetted resources that wecurated because there's so much out there
these days, like if you gosearching how do I become a data analyst,
and it's like, oh, there'sa million lengths, what do I
know? But we vetted those sothey can once they're inspired by the content
and they can actually go and sampleout what that career is and really how

(19:40):
I like in it is. Youknow, you can basically complete a career
module in about twenty minutes, evenif you don't want to pursue that career
at the end of it, you'rejust now more like aware of it.
If you do ten of those,you're ten times more aware of what you
can be, which is really powerful. And so that is the thrust of
our app and we're building. Werecently got funded by the mass Clean Energy

(20:04):
Center to create an offshore wind modulefor a budding industry in Massachusetts. Offshore
wind is starting, So that willbe our eleventh career and we're really excited
because we feel like we have agreat model now to continue to churn out
more careers as they come up andthen that just really opens the door in

(20:26):
terms of accessible information in a meaningfulway to what's actually possible, right,
and then you provide tools and informationfor next steps of how they can go
about pursuing what's interesting to them exactly. And our goal, like with the
Offshore Wind module, those tools andnext steps will be Okay, here's a

(20:48):
training program that you can go intohere here, you know, like actual
that process of education, inspiration bridgeto and that's our goal to ultimately get
them to a place where they're signingup for a programs they're like, oh
my god, this looks so exciting. You know. It's funny. We

(21:11):
a lot of times have a lotof adults who I meet with and they
say they watched the videos and they'relike, oh, that made me want
to become a marine ecologist or UXdesigners very enticing. Now you said it
before that you and I don't evenknow half the careers that are available out
there right now. And with theadvent of AI, who knows what doors

(21:33):
open up into the not so distantfuture. And as a very specific example,
Steam the Streets recently partnered with theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for another
module on the app tell us abouthow that came about. Yeah. So,
actually one of our advisors, doctorTammy Silva, is a marine cologist,

(21:56):
my favorite advisors. She actually helpedus right grant to the National Marine
Sanctuary Foundation, which works in tandemwith Noah, to fund this career module
to really help We had just greatfeedback from that module. We did a
national webinar a couple months ago andfolks educators from all over the country.

(22:18):
We're very responsive and we're on thewebinar. We have a lot of interests
from professors at different universities such asBaylor and University calif Santa Cruz now who
want to partner to communicate their science. Right because folks are doing great work,
but it's another thing to bring thatwork to the people, especially young

(22:42):
people, in a way that theycan digest it in a way that's engaging
and interesting. And that's the jobof mediators, right of creatives, to
really do that communication part. Sothe huge need across industries and we're blessed
to be able to do the work, and I think having that organization partner
with you is really validating for whatyou're doing and certainly shows the power of

(23:06):
the app. Yeah, that's tremendous. Now, just a couple more things.
I have a friend, he's amusician and a teacher who often says
that he operates at the intersection ofmusic and community. It would seem like
steam the streets, and you mightalso operate at the intersection of music and
community and maybe add the arts tothat. How do you think those aspects

(23:29):
reinforce and build on each other?Music, arts and then community. How
do you see the balance between thoseand how is it additive to the work
that you do. I feel like, you know, what we always say
is the arts. People say whysteam versus stem right? And the arts?
Is that human touch? Right?It's it's the thing that really connects

(23:53):
the people, right, you know, the art of communication, the art
of language. Arts go all theway up to you know, in depth
performance and masterpieces of video, film, etc. And I think that's the
role that arts play and music.It's just it's a universal language. It's

(24:18):
a soundtrack to life. That's wellsaid, Ben. Generally, at this
point in the conversation, I wouldask, what's next? Might you have
so many things on your plate rightnow? I can't imagine there's too many
other things that you could add.At this point, you got a couple
of lifetimes of work here in frontof you already, go ahead, give
it a shot. As I alludedto before, are you know, as

(24:41):
we're really perfecting our model and hopefullyexpanding and building our organization to have more
capacity to help. But we wantto be the helpers of these diverse and
inclusive pipelines, right. We wantto use media outreach and empowering and bridging

(25:02):
students to action to be the fuelthat runs through the pipeline. We're focused
on growth and how can we growin a healthy and sustainable way and not
be burnt out? You know,that's our goal to really continue to just
expand what we're doing at a biggerlevel and make key strategic partnerships that are

(25:25):
going to help folks get mentored andfolks get the other services they need that
go along with what we do toreally ultimately have a big impact on these
multiple sets of problems that kind ofcompound each other. Well, I think
you're taking a good view of it. You got to take care of yourself
first. You have a big missionhere in the world. We've been talking

(25:48):
with Ben Gilberg. Thank you somuch. Ben, I really appreciate the
time. How can folks learn alittle bit more about Steam the Streets and
maybe also find the app that you'vetalked about? For sure, Steam the
Street is our website. It's thebest way to find it. We have
an app page right there. Wehave a merch donation options services, everything

(26:11):
is on there. And then youknow all of our social media's we have
a lot of content on those.Pretty much everything is at Steam the Streets.
You can find us and yeah,let's build together. Great and Ben
Gilberg, thank you so much.I really appreciate your time and your insights
here. I appreciate you. Mike, a big thank you to our producer,

(26:45):
Ken Carberry of Chart Productions. What'son your mind? Send us your
thoughts, comments and questions to What'sat Risk at gmail dot com. That's
one word, What's at risk atgmail dot com. Thank you,