Hello and welcome to my blog! Come on in and make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything? Nothing? Well then, let me tell you a little about myself. As you can probably tell from the URL, my name is Benjamin Robinson (although some folks call me Ben, which is also fine by me). I’ve lived in some great cities all across the country including: Cincinnati, OH (hometown), Pittsburgh, PA (college), Los Angeles, CA (graduate school), and now in Washington D.C., where I’ve lived since 2014.
Currently, I am a Manager of Data Strategy & Insights at the Universal Service Administrative Company where my work focuses on managing the delivery of business intelligence and open data projects along with data science software and analytics product. However, there’s a decent chance that you might know me from my work on Grinding The Mocks, which is both a side project and a data/insights company I founded that uses mock drafts, the wisdom of crowds, and machine learning models to predict the NFL Draft. Through this work, I’ve been fortunate to work with NFL teams, agents, and football analytics companies as well as having my work featured in FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times, and Football Outsiders.
But there’s so much more to me than my work! In my personal life, I’m also passionate about:
being Jewish (✡️and proud of it)
trying to be the best uncle to my niece and nephew (❤️you J&D)
collecting vinyl records (check out my Discogs💽)
rooting for my favorite sports teams (especially the Cincinnati Reds ⚾, Liverpool Football Club ⚽, and PITT Panthers 🏈 & 🏀)!