About

I was born and raised in Essex County, growing up in Maplewood with my parents, one sister and one brother.  I attended Clinton (elementary) School, South Orange Junior High and Columbia High School, and it was at SOJH that I met my future wife, Karen.  Our first date was in 1976 and we’ve been together ever since!  Upon graduation I attended Lehigh University, earning a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.  While there I became involved in many activities, mostly music-oriented.

Ben Blinder, drum major (right)

Karen and I moved to Verona in 1986 and rented half of a two-family house on Westview Road for five years before buying our first house, an older home on Claremont Avenue, where we lived for fourteen years.   Our daughter, Rachel, was born while we were in that house and is a proud graduate of Laning Avenue School and HB Whitehorne Midde School; she is now a student at Verona High School.  We built our current home on Fairview Avenue, right next to the high school tennis courts and the old railroad tracks (the tracks are now a walking and biking trail), and moved there in 2005.

I currently work for TRI-K Industries, a supplier of specialty ingredients in the cosmetic and personal care industry, as their director of global business development.  At TRI-K, I search for and evaluate new ingredient technologies, develop and maintain business relationships with our suppliers (this includes negotiation of confidentiality agreements and distribution contracts, and regular business reports) and support our customers and our sales team; in addition, I am directly in charge of several departments — distribution and logistics, customer service and IT.

I am very active in Verona life and volunteer with several important groups — I am a member of the Verona Public Health Reserve Corps,  the Verona September 11th Memorial Committee and the Verona Landmarks Preservation Commission.  For eight years I was also a softball manager and coach, first with the Verona Recreation Department and then with the Verona Baseball/Softball League.

Outside Verona, I am also an active trumpeter, volunteering as a bugler with Bugles Across America, an organization that provides buglers for military funerals when the armed services cannot provide a live bugler of their own.  I also play trumpet for Christmas and Easter at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit in Verona, and serve as principal trumpet for the Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra, a community organization under the auspices of the Bloomfield Federation of Music.