Charles Benson

My name is Charles Benson. I was raised in Charleston, South Carolina, largely by my great-grandparents, whose home was open to anyone who needed one: family, neighbors, strangers, it didn't matter. That upbringing shaped how I lead, how I build, and who I build for. Professionally, I've spent 11 years in human services, including time at the Director level building programs from the ground up. I helped write two grants totaling $8 million in behavioral health funding, both awarded. From there, I built nearly everything the program needed myself: the Standard Operating Procedures and safety plan, the marketing and community-engagement strategy, the team, the website, and the operational infrastructure behind it. I led that program from a blank page to a 24-hour operation, the first program of its kind built from the ground up in New York City. Underneath all of it: quality assurance, health-information systems, and the regulatory relationships that keep a program accountable, the parts a client should never have to think about.

This work is also personal, though maybe not in the way people assume. I don't carry a diagnosis myself, but I deal with anxiety and depression like a lot of people do, and I've navigated the mental health system up close through family members living with documented severe mental illness: sitting in appointments, learning the language, learning exactly where the system fails people. I'm also a survivor of intimate partner violence, a story I'm not ready to tell in full yet, though I'm working on it. None of that is incidental to the work. It's a large part of why I understand a peer-led model from more than one side of the table. I started Window Seat Collective at a point in my life when I knew I needed to take care of myself, and to get away from the environment that was making me sick. So now I'm building the thing I needed. For myself, and for the people who need it too.