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Ben Romney

I build software, paint mountains, and want this century to go well for everyone in it.

Ben Romney, smiling, outdoors with blurred green hills behind him.

Currently

What I'm up to.

I'm a software engineer at the Horizon Institute for Public Service in Washington, DC, where I work on data systems. Horizon helps technical experts in fields like AI and biosecurity move into government and public policy roles.

Outside of work, I paint, meditate, cook plant-based meals, run trails, and am slowly learning the cello.

I care about how emerging technologies are built and governed, and I like meeting people who work on that.

Projects

A few things I've made.

Personal projects I'm proudest of.

A11y Lens logo: a white magnifying glass with a checkmark inside, on a blue rounded square.

A11y Lens

A browser extension that helps developers run accessibility audits and turn the results into shareable reports. It's built on axe-core and designed to make issues easier to prioritize and fix.

a11ylens.com

Romcat Labs logo: a glowing beaker with colorful liquid inside, framed by a stylized cat silhouette.

Romcat Labs

A small personal studio for digital experiments: apps, tools, and whatever else I want to explore. It's where I ship things that don't fit anywhere else.

romcatlabs.com

Augmented reality view of a classroom. A large model of Earth floats above the carpet between the desks, showing Europe and Africa, with small pins dropped on its surface and three control icons across the top.

EarthAR

EarthAR was my master's degree project. A classroom-scale augmented reality app where a teacher places a model of the Earth on the floor and students move around it with tablets, exploring continents, oceans, and the planet's interior.

Paintings

Mt Hood at sunset.

I paint the mountains I've lived near. I painted this one in Oregon, in the last minutes of light before the peak turns blue.

Acrylic painting of Mt Hood at sunset. Warm apricot and peach sky above a snow-covered peak that catches alpenglow, with deep blue-violet shadows in the foothills and a silhouetted forest foreground.
Mt Hood acrylic on canvas

What I care about

The question I return to.

How do we make sure this century goes well for all sentient beings?

The technologies we build today, including AI, could shape the lives of billions of people and hundreds of billions of animals. I want to use my career to help them flourish, especially by making sure those with little voice are considered in the decisions shaping our future.

Underneath all of it is Vipassana meditation, every morning and evening. It's something of a compassion amplifier for me, and it keeps me honest about paying attention, which seems to be where everything else starts.

Get in touch

Let's connect.

The easiest place to reach me is LinkedIn. If you work in AI governance or alternative proteins, I'd love to compare notes.

linkedin.com/in/bromney