About Your Editor

Photo Credit: The Los Angeles Times

If I were to bump into you at a cocktail party (or the library), I’d say something like this, “Hi, I’m Christine Benton, and I love books. If you gave me the option of having television or books, I would choose books without a second thought.”

I began “working” in publishing as a newspaper and yearbook editor in junior high and have been employed professionaly in some facet of the publishing and communications industries since 1991. My first real “gig” was during my senior year in college, writing for a rap magazine called Rap Sheet. Dubbed “Chrissy D,” I interviewed and wrote about rap artists—interviewing by phone to hide the fact that I was just a young, studious English major at UCLA and not a hip hop aficionado. Yo!

From there, I worked as an editor for a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C., covering social, foreign and economic policy. The gift of this experience was the opportunity to work with some of the smartest minds in our country and to be consistently exposed to excellent writing. Following, I moved to New York and worked as a reviews editor for a PC magazine called Windows magazine. The gift of this experience is that I worked on a first-class publication that was read by 1.5 million people. This taught me what the “average” consumer found valuable and sharpened my editorial skills. In 2000, I made the switch from the publishing industry to the public relations industry, which taught me how to use communications strategically—to use communications to help companies increase brand awareness and earn these companies recognition and wealth.

Over the course of my career, a number of people have sent materials to me and said, “Do your magic, Christine.” After hearing this time and again, from gifted entrepreneurs to executives of Fortune 500 companies, I began to realize that what I feel is ordinary “work” occurs like magic to others. The essence of this magic is that I am able to connect to another’s vision and help him or her articulate it. Sometimes I connect to visions that people don’t even know they have until they see it in front of them. That’s what I’m here to do for you. It’s a labor of love. I see talent in everyone and am here to help you share your talents with others.