My name is Ben Geisberg and I am the founder and President of Amber Family History, Inc. Born and raised in Los Angeles, I have been living in Vancouver, British Columbia since 2015. History has been in my blood as long as I can remember, either as a passion or profession; I remember late nights at the dinner table as a kid, listening to my dad tell me about the past; stopping at every brown sign historical marker during long road trips; and a multitude of vacations that revolved around a place’s past. While at the University of British Columbia, I had the opportunity to channel these passions into my history degree and studied as many diverse topics as possible before finding a passion for contemporary post-WWII history, culminating in a graduating thesis about South Africa during the Cold War. My research made extensive use of first-person accounts and interviews, exposing me to the power of oral histories as a tool for excavating the past. I appreciated the directness, honesty, and unfiltered nature of these first-hand accounts, finding them to be compelling and a “truer” way of telling history. The narratives were vivid and the characters engaging, not hampered by the formalities of traditionally-written and traditionally-recorded histories. 

This desire for learning and passion for more recent history, and experience with oral histories, informed my decision to start Amber Family History, a company dedicated to creating a resource for families and individuals to use to record their living memory – the recent past. I hope to use this company as a platform to both help individuals and families create a lasting record of their family’s history and to share my passion for history.