This is the personal website of Benjamin Petersen, a web engineer and aspiring entrepreneur.

Right now

Last update Aug. 17

I’m currently traveling through Europe, starting in the east and heading west.

Since I quit my last programming job in June of 2017, I have:

• rehabbed my 1930s South Philadelphia row home
• sold, by owner, my home in less than 7 days
• moved to Medellín, Colombia and attended a local university to study Spanish
• delivered a somewhat well received wedding toast/speech without fainting
• biked across Arizona over 14 days with one of my mejor amigos
• developed a serious interest in micro farming and started a garden
• traveled across Vietnam on bike, bus, foot, plane, and scooter
• lived and traveled in India for two months
• became a certified Hatha Yoga teacher

History

I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. After graduating from Arizona State University, I relocated to Washington, DC for seven years. While there I: worked as a project manager at an educational non-profit; studied applied math and statistics at Georgetown University; built robust, predictive mathematical models across several industries; and learned to program Python and appreciate the wonders of modern computation.

Next, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania became home for three years. I worked as a full stack engineer at a financial tech startup focused on Hard Money Lending. I learned so much while coding in Python and JavaScript alongside many talented people and truly enjoyed being part of a team. While working in Philly, I bought a house, a real fixer-upper, and learned even more through the opportunities and challenges provided by building equity with sweat. Two years later, I sold that house myself and decided to start living a less conventional, more purposeful minimal lifestyle.