A multi-produced and award-winning screenwriter known for mixed narratives, political-intrigue, and broken relationships in drama, comedy, action-thriller, and Transcendentalism, Benjamin Budd also brings extensive backgrounds in conflict zones, crime, academia, geopolitics, Fine Art, and more. Concurrent with over 20-years in film and TV, Ben pursued supporting interests in the international sphere. Building on an undergrad in the Arts and an early background in the collaborative environments of advertising, Ben pursued passions in film, talent, comedy, and writing, placing in such contests as the Nicholl and the Page International. When the opportunity arose, he traveled to Britain to earn an MA in a subset of International Relations concerning irregular conflict and crime in post-conflict zones, and soon began writing features for a US film studio. In 2013, Ben accepted a job teaching Internally Displaced Children at a local grade-school in Kurdish Northern Iraq, forgotten at the airport and finding his way across the landscape to the office of his new employer. Over two-years with no security or parachute he lived locally in Erbil, seeing Mosul fall just 40-miles west, and the nearby Ministry of Justice destroyed in a plot right out of 2007's "The Kingdom." He has stood by the mass graves of al-Anfal in Halabja on the Iranian border, and traveled on the ground throughout the region; Kirkuk, Diyarbakir, Sulimainyah, etc., and on one accidental detour, by bus through the Mosul suburbs. On April 17, 2015 Ben was sipping a beer in Ainkawa when they hit the consulate across the street. An IED is never like the movies, but rather more an instant in time so precise it doesn't register, except the furniture finds itself on the other side of the room. Ben lived while sadly others did not. While continuing to write film, he went on to perform ad hoc country risk analysis and consult on media and extremism, particularly around the constitutive nature on epistemic identity, being published, and even delivering a paper in London on the subject. He also went on to pursue high-risk security credentials in South Africa, including volunteer nightshifts in a mobile ambulance through the Cape Town townships where body-armor was compulsory. He has taught Hostile Environment Awareness Training to deploying humanitarians, including a well-known A-list actor, and provides remote production security to media crews, such as in the Kenosha, WI unrest. While committed to equitable representation in his writing, to date Ben has over 1200-pages of produced screen with names.