James Ferrari has spent the past decade operating at the intersection of art, technology, media, politics, journalism, and public health.
Projects include as a producer “A Mouthful of Air” with Amanda Seyfried, Paul Giamatti, Amy Irving, Finn Wittrock, and Britt Robertson. Currently in production is a documentary on the life of photographer, naturalist, and artist Peter Beard. James is working as a producer with Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray of Maven Pictures to produce a film about Rebecca Gromperts. Writer Olivia Hetreed wrote the screenplay and Maggie Betts is to direct. The film will tell the true story of Gomperts, the Dutch doctor who recruited a band of women to sail around the world and provide abortions at sea for women who have no legal alternative through the Women On Waves initiative. Film slated for production in 2023.
In 2005 James created an arts collective Tribal Truth which is an online community that strives to forge effective partnerships with artists and humanitarian organizations and work as an incubator for social change. It features artists in the fields of film, video, art, poetry, and photography. It showcases a variety of NGOs and other humanitarian organizations in an attempt to inspire and encourage people to get involved in the issues facing the world today.
James is involved in multiple philanthropic projects. He is a member of The Common Good , a non-partisan membership organization dedicated to the spread of healthy political debate and discourse. Additionally, James is on the High Impact Documentary Film Committee which supports documentary filmmakers through (HIDF), a grant funding program for the production of compelling content that highlights progressive issues. The HIDF funding program provides significantly more money than is typically available through traditional funding outlets. Some notable recipients of funding include the Oscar-winning film White Helmets and the Sundance films The Bad Kids, The Force, Whose Streets, Dark Money, United Skates, Knock Down the House. To learn more about HIDF funding and other grant opportunities, visit www.thresholdfoundation.org
James Ferrari is a social entrepreneur, filmmaker, writer, and artist. His work focuses on a multitude of projects ranging from media to business to philanthropy; all with an eye on empowerment through social interaction. As a social entrepreneur, his interests encompass projects related to reproductive health, climate change, politics, AIDS, news literacy, and the social and environmental fabric of Sub-Saharan Africa. From communities to entire societies, from grassroots projects to national and international organizations, James works with groups to challenge their infrastructure in order to solve social problems.
James is an early investor and advisor in social and environmental justice businesses such as Aspiration and SimpliPhi Power. In 2017 he got involved in Aspiration, a financial tool that helps people and companies fight climate change and spend sustainably. James is also an investor in Simpliphi Power, a company that manufactures clean and affordable energy storage systems by utilizing non-toxic lithium ferro phosphate.
James has worked with developing world governments and NGOs with a goal of bridging partnerships as a means of diplomacy. He has advised multinational corporations relating to local political, economic, and social issues in developing nations. He believes that America needs partnerships, and not rhetoric, with emerging world nations and cultures in order to have a viable future.
Since 2014 James has been involved with a new macro-disciplined school of thinking of the fusing together of technology, biology, science, social psychology, and economies. He attended programs through The University of Michigan and the MIT Collective Intelligence which focused on the shared group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and collective efforts. James has been drawn to this new order of hyper-connectivity and its implications on the global impact therein.
In 2018 Ferrari joined the National Advisory Board of the News Literacy Project (NLP). Checkology, NLP’s high school education program, has reached over 2,500 American schools. The program helps student’s decipher what’s verifiable and factual in our current age of disinformation. As a member of the NLP, James has helped leverage popular culture and technology with our global pandemic. During the broadway play “Lifespan of a Fact,” starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), James facilitated disadvantaged high schoolers from the Tri-State area to see the play. The play explored the grey area of what constitutes a fact in literary non-fiction. Students after the show to participate in the conversation.
In 2017-2020, James was an evaluator of a new high school education program called Safety First. This program was written by Marsha Rosenbaum, and takes a contemporary approach to drug education in high schools. As an evaluator, Ferrari helped green-light the pilot Safety First program between the Drug Policy Alliance and Bard High School, in New York City. Safety first encourages critical and inclusionary thinking with practical approaches to the ever-present substances around us.
He also participated and collaborated with the MIT Collective Intelligence Group at MIT Media Lab which brought together researchers from the academy, businesses, non-profits, governments, technologists, and the world at large to share insights and ideas from a variety of fields relevant to understanding and designing collective intelligence in many forms. Most recently in September of 2019 the MIT Media Lab for the Data-Pop Alliance project, a joint initiative to leverage the new ecosystem of big data in order to improve ownership and safety of one’s data. The goal is to empower people in a way that avoids the pitfalls of a new digital divide, de-humanization, and de-democratization and privacy.
With an eye towards technology being used for the benefit of the underprivileged, James has become invested in the field of cryptocurrency and attended the MIT Bitcoin Expo in 2016.
In 2019, Letters to Strangers, a peer to peer mental health program founded by Diana Chao, started a competition. He worked the the project’s founder Diana Chao as a judge. In 2021, Chao received a wonder grant from the Shawn Mendes Foundation for work with Letters to Strangers.
James is actively involved in political elections by supporting local and national Democratic candidates and raising awareness among the philanthropic society of the importance of participation in politics for the betterment of the United States. In the spring of 2020 James was invited as a delegate to the For Freedoms Congress in Los Angeles co-hosted by Sankofa.org. In a series of “town halls,” artists led these delegates from all 50 States, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico in building a collective artists’ platform for public action to supercharge civic engagement in their communities leading up to the 2020 Presidential Election. Delegates we made up of artistic collaborators, institutional and organizational partners, and funders.
James’s previous involvement in the non-for-profit arena includes the facilitation of the construction of homes in flood- devastated Mozambique in 2002. The project was derived from James’ alliance with the Synergos Institute and he worked closely with the FDC (Foundation for Community Development) and its chairperson Graca Machel, the wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela. The proceeds of his Benjamin James company’s successful marketing the luxury apartment building 21Chelsea funded the project.
James attended a workshop in 2002 on the global status of Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Windhoek, Namibia. The UNICEF sponsored workshop was attended by delegates from 22 countries with the intent of implementing large-scale action to achieve United Nations General Assembly Special Session goals and develop a clear commitment of action at both the country and regional levels.
In 2005 he also participated in a Sister City workshop (Sponsored by Mayor Bloomberg and Ambassador Soderberg) which focused on New York City’s Tourism industry and Economic Market and its similarities with our sister city Johannesburg.
More recently, in 2019 James was a participant in Good Pitch Local Philadelphia. Good Pitch Local is a space for community, collaboration and creative change, created to raise up stories that matter in the fight for a more open, just and vibrant Philly––and beyond–– by the artists and organizers on the front lines of social change.
James also participated in the one-of-a-kind speaking event TEDxSingSing in 2020. TEDxSingSing was primarily organized by a team of six currently incarcerated men inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility. More than half of the featured speakers were chosen from men living at Sing Sing. This event was created by men directly impacted by the criminal justice system with the intent to highlight the voices, stories, and insight of those who are too often overlooked. The theme of this event was “Re-Defining What Matters,” leading to innovative talks from people of all different backgrounds. This included the miraculous talks of people whose lives were transformed because they were able to access education while incarcerated.
At the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, James helped produce two films through Ferrari Media, a subsidiary of Tribal Truth 2025; a short film directed by actor Mike Doyle (TV’s Law & Order: SVU) titled “Shiner” starring Tony-nominated actress Amy Ryan; and the romantic comedy “Kettle of Fish” (also exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival) starring Gina Gerson and Matthew Modine.
Additionally, James Ferrari is on the High Impact Documentary Film Committee which supports documentary filmmakers through (HIDF), a grant funding program for the production of compelling content that highlights progressive issues. The HIDF funding program provides significantly more money than is typically available through traditional funding outlets. Some notable recipients of funding include the Oscar-winning film White Helmets and the Sundance films The Bad Kids, The Force, Whose Streets, Dark Money, United Skates, Knock Down the House. To learn more about HIDF funding and other grant opportunities, visit www.thresholdfoundation.org and www.synergos.org. Projects include “A Mouthful of Air” with Amanda Seyfried, Paul Giamatti, Amy Irving, Finn Wittrock, and Britt Robertson. James is the executive producer of the film, release date 2021-2022. Currently in production is a documentary on the life of photographer, naturalist, and artist Peter Beard.
Personal involvement in the performing arts includes acting in Checkhov productions directed by Alice Spivak in New York City in 2017 and 2018.
In the for-profit world, James is an active investor in socially and environmentally conscious global businesses including Aspiration Bank in 2017, an alternative bank that doesn’t invest in non-sustainable businesses such as climate abuser businesses and ammunitions producers, and Simpliphy Power which is a renewable energy company assisting in the fight against climate change.
James Ferrari also founded Benjamin James Real Estate in 1993 after a long frustrating search for the perfect home in New York. He saw the need for a real estate agency that was capable of catering to a full range of New Yorkers. His aim was simple: to create a truly service-oriented real estate firm with expert agents that worked hard for sellers, buyers, renters, and landlords.
The first decade of Benjamin James established it as a leading firm in the New York City real estate market. In 2006 Benjamin James Real Estate utilized its reputation as a young and progressive company of creative and savvy New Yorkers to aid developers in marketing new buildings more effectively.
In 1998 James co-founded Blue Velvet Boxing Gym which was named one of the two best boxing gyms by New Yorker Magazine a year later. During its five-year existence, the gym catered to a wide variety of clientele from locals to celebrities.
James Ferrari attended Hunter College, majoring in Political Science, with continuing education in Globalization and its Effect on the 20th Century. James Ferrari is a member of the Foreign Policy Association, the Ubuntu Education Fund, the Public Policy Institute, NYSIA, New York Art Society and Society for the Preservation of Public Space, the Threshold Foundation, The Arena, Synergos, The Creative Resistance and a friend of the Accompanied Library, and supports The Whitney Museum, the New York Philharmonic and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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