Meet the Founders

Ben Cohen
Co-Founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream

Bennett Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Long Island, where he met Jerry Greenfield in junior high school. Ben's first professional contact with ice cream came in his senior year of high school, when he worked as an ice-cream man, driving a truck, ringing bells and selling ice-cream pops to kids. He was promoted to the position of "boxman," meaning he worked in the freezer and distributed ice cream to other ice-cream truck drivers.

In 1977, Ben left school and decided to go into the food business with his childhood pal, Jerry. The two settled on ice cream, and started performing research. They chose Burlington, Vermont, as the second-best place to start their ice cream venture, mostly due to the fact that it was a great college town in desperate need of an ice-cream parlor.

As the business has grown, Ben's jobs have included scooper and taste-tester, truck driver, marketing director, salesperson, president, CEO, not-CEO, and Chairperson of the Board. In 1987, he wrote a book with Jerry called "Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book."

Ben and Jerry have been recognized for fostering their company's commitment to social responsibility by the Council on Economic Priorities, which awarded them the Corporate Giving award in 1988 for donating 7.5 percent of their pre-tax profits to nonprofit organizations through the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, and by the U.S. Small Business Administration, which named them U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year in 1988 in a White House ceremony hosted by President Reagan.

Ben is on the boards of various organizations, and is an active founding member of Businesses for Social Responsibility, an organization that works to promote socially responsible business practices.

Jerry Greenfield
Cofounder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream

Jerry Greenfield was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. He grew up and went to school in Merrick, Long Island, where he met Ben in junior high school. Jerry enrolled in Oberlin College in Ohio to study pre-med.

At Oberlin, Jerry got his first taste of working in the ice-cream industry when he took a job as a scooper in the college cafeteria. After graduating from Oberlin, Jerry worked as a lab technician in New York. In 1974, Jerry moved to North Carolina with his wife-to-be, Elizabeth. Jerry moved back up north in 1976, and again moved in with Ben, this time in Saratoga Springs, New York. There, they decided to pursue their dream of starting a food business together. They settled on ice cream and began researching the industry. They set up their Ben & Jerry's ice-cream parlor in Burlington, Vermont, which opened in May of 1978. Jerry made all the ice cream for the busy shop, which quickly became well known for its rich, unusual flavors and community approach to business.

Today, Jerry's official titles at the company include Chairman of the Board (since 1998) and Director of Mobile Promotions. He often joins Ben at many speaking engagements and, along with Ben, is very active in Businesses For Social Responsibility, a group that works to promote an alternative business model based on socially responsible business practices.