Bruce Benefiel

Biography
Bruce 'Zen' Benefiel is an American author, coach, facilitator, musician, minister and ufologist. His professional career spans aerospace, education, event management, music and theater production. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on June 30, 1957 and adopted on August 12, 1957 by Robert and Louise Benefiel of Alexandria, Indiana. He graduated from Alexandria-Monroe Township High School in 1975. He attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana for two years. He got married to Beth Locke in 1978, had four children and divorced in 1988.
He moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1981 and worked as a machinist for AirResearch, an aerospace manufacturing company. When the aerospace industry took a downturn, he found work at Four D Marketing, a health food manufacturer and distributor as a sales manager responsible for a 13-state territory. He went back to work in the aerospace industry for Garrett Pneumatics Systems in 1984, beginning as a machinist and moving into production control in 1986, responsible for $7 million a month in commercial spares shipments. Divorced in November 1988, he left the company in 1989 to pursue other ventures.
From 1990 to 1992, Bruce produced over 100 television One World television shows for the Christown Lions Club on the public access network in Phoenix, Arizona while working various jobs. He picked up the nickname 'Zen' during production. He began working as a drummer with the Outcasts and Social Misfits studio band and over the next decade, recorded enough material for nine CDs. He earned a Master of Business Administration degree in 1997, Secondary Teaching Certification in 1998 and a Master of Arts in Organizational Management in 2003 all from the University of Phoenix. He also earned certification in hypnotherapy in 1998 and transformational life coaching in 2004 from the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.
Bruce taught high school at Trevor Browne and Carl Hayden from 1998 to 2000, then took full charge of the curriculum for two different charter schools, Omega Academy in Peoria, Arizona and then Carmel Community Arts and Technology High School in Chandler, Arizona. His last teaching position was in 2002 for Valle del Sol at their residential treatment facility known as Casa Valle.
From 2002-2004 he worked for Self Employment Loan Fund as a facilitator/instructor working with women and minority-owned businesses to help them acquire and manage micro-loans. His next professional endeavor was facilitating partnering workshops for building, road and bridge construction, mostly for Arizona Department of Transportation and the Federal Highways Administration. His last project was the F-35 Operations and Maintenance Facility at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona.
During the latter part of the 2000s he facilitated ufology-related discussion groups while working on several books and authored several articles for the Sedona Journal of Emergence, SelfGrowth.com. He also produced several guided meditation CDs. By 2013, Benefiel authored several books including Zendor the Contrarian: A Seminal View of Consciousness, Cosmology and the Congruence of Science and Spirituality. He has been an avid researcher in ufology, an internet radio guest and curates the website UfologyPRSS.
Beginning in 2014 he joined the Globcal International Cooperative and become the Development Director for Ecology Crossroads Cooperative Foundation, a 501(c)(3) which was established to promote conservation education, environmental protection and ecological ethics.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu