Ben Gerst – Former Chief Technology Officer

Ben Gerst was the Los Angeles Times’ chief technology officer from 2018 to 2021. As chief technology officer, he oversaw product, design and engineering for digital platforms. Previously, Gerst was the newspaper’s chief technology officer and senior vice president for product development under Tribune Publishing, the Times’ former owner.

Gerst has long worked at the intersection of journalism and technology. From 2013 to 2016, he was senior vice president for product development at Fox Sports. At a pivotal time for television and streaming media, Gerst led the product and technology team to the launch of foxsports.com on a new content management system and of Fox Sports GO — the first tablet app to stream a Super Bowl in 2014, with 1 million concurrent streamers at the peak of the game.

For eight years, from 2005 to 2013, Gerst worked in various technology roles at the New York Times, where he led a platform technologies group responsible for advertising systems, email, community and personalization, site search, blogs, information development and content API’s. An advocate for developer culture at Times, Gerst led the Times’ open API and developer outreach program which included the TimesOpen Events and “hack days,” a suite of open API’s and a beta site to showcase innovative prototypes built by the Times’ engineering staff.

Before the New York Times, Gerst developed software for various organizations and startups, including BASF and Digital Island. Gerst holds a B.S. in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh.