This is not to say that Richard Benbow III did not enjoy the cable television business — as an avid sports fan, he more than relished his roles with DirecTV and Time Warner Cable. However, it’s been hard for him not to notice the change in tenor of the conversations he has out in the public when he mentions his advocacy for UCLA.
“Higher education was something instilled in me early on and it’s something I can get behind,” he said. “When you say UCLA, people light up.”
Benbow, who started his new position in UCLA Government and Community Relations as senior executive director earlier this year, hasn’t minded leaving behind questions like why someone’s cable box isn’t working right.
“Now we are talking about access to education and endless possibilities for students,” he said. “We’re talking about advancing society as a whole — advancing the state of California.”
Starting this new job was a chance to “redefine my mission,” Benbow said, and he has hit the ground running in his position as day-to-day manager of the office, second in command to Assistant Vice Chancellor Keith Parker.
“There are a lot of leadership things that I’m learning,” he said, noting that he finished up his M.B.A. at the University of Michigan in April. “So part of my initial time here is to come in, without any ego or knowledge, and to observe and learn what’s going on and then try to figure out where I can fit in to help.”
Benbow was born in St. Louis, and is quick to note his sports fandom and his undying allegiance to the Cardinals baseball team. His family moved to the Los Angeles area when he was about 5 or 6. His father was a civic worker for 35 years, including work in the community redevelopment agency for the city of Los Angeles. His mother was a lifetime educator at an elementary school in the L.A. Unified School District.
Playing basketball was important to Benbow as he grew up in Los Angeles, but eventually the reality that he wasn’t getting any taller changed his trajectory. He ended up going to Howard University in Washington, D.C. because the school offered him an opportunity to play some ball, but he also applied to UCLA and UC Berkeley.
“For me, I wanted to get the most out of my college experience that I possibly could,” Benbow said. “And even at that time I had interest in being a lobbyist, or government relations or some form or fashion of being in politics.”
He graduated with a degree in international business and an emphasis in finance. The big ideas of business have always fascinated him, but it was an internship in the office of U.S. Rep. Julian Dixon (California) that eventually would have the greatest influence on his career.
“It was fascinating, and being that young, I had no idea what I had at my disposal,” Benbow said. “The number of influential people and networking opportunities — working on the Hill in D.C., there’s not a better position I could imagine.”
But Benbow thought that was merely a pit stop. He went on to an internship with Hughes Aircraft, with a track to a full-time job. Six months after he graduated, the company went through a large amount of layoffs. Hunting for a job, Benbow found that something that got the attention of potential employers was the Dixon internship. Rep. Henry Waxman’s office came calling, and Benbow was back in politics.
“I think I’ve always been somewhat driven by the business side,” Benbow said. “But no matter what job I had, because of my background with Waxman and Dixon, somehow folks always identified me as the person to deal with government entities.”
After the Waxman job, Benbow landed what he saw as a dream job: working for DirecTV and specifically with its sports programming division. He furthered his education by earning a master's degree in communication management from USC. Cable television would become his life for many years, first with DirecTV, then with the city’s cable regulatory division and, finally, landing at Time Warner Cable.
Benbow hopes that his business and corporate background can be of use to UCLA.
“I want to help change the perception and dynamic of what government and community relations is. It is a value-add to the university,” he said. “I want to tell our story the most effectively.”
To do that, Benbow acknowledges the new landscape his department is dealing with in the digital and short-attention-span era.
“We’re competing for a very small amount of free time that we are asking people to give,” he said.
To that end, Benbow believes some of his business experience could lend a hand — in particular, the use of predictive analytics to, among other uses, find people who are predisposed for political engagement. He is also looking for those things that get people passionate about UCLA — football, for example.
“There has to be a way to tap into that passion and enthusiasm,” he said. “Not only for football, but to tap into that for the university.”
The ability to make advocacy personal is paramount, Benbow added, especially for cultivating the next generation.
“You need to be where they are, and see what they care about and then tie UCLA issues into what they care about,” he said. “We have to be there for all our advocates, and tap into their issues. We are a resource and if this is something they believe in they should join us.”
Benbow strives to lead with empathy and to better his fellow UCLA staff members and advocates.
“This is an opportunity for me to really advocate for something I believe in," he said. "As society moves forward, those who understand what higher education can do for them later in life will undoubtedly do better than those who don’t."
This story was originally published by UCLA Government and Community Relations.