Ben Wan grew up as a third generation Chinese American in Irvine, California. In 2006, he became one of the twenty-six undergraduate students accepted into USC’s Writing for Screen and Television Program. Shortly after graduation, he wrote his first original drama pilot and a Mad Men spec, which both landed in the top ten of Script Pipeline’s TV Writing Contest in 2011. In 2012, out of 1,600 applicants, he was one of the eight writers selected for NBC’s Writers On the Verge. Two weeks into the program, however, he was diagnosed with Stage IV Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

After six months of chemotherapy, Ben beat cancer into remission, but his near-death experience pushed him to turn his personal life around and he enrolled in Become Sharp, a coaching company for confidence, social skills, and dating, specializing in Asian American clients. His first meeting with them was chronicled in an episode of MyxTV’s I’m Asian American And… In 2019, after years of being a client, Ben became a coach for the company, where he currently works, helping others grapple with the same issues he once faced.

Post-cancer, Ben gained representation at Believeland Management as well as wrote The Phantasm Compendium in 2017, a chronicle of the making of Don Coscarelli’s cult horror series. Aside from writing and coaching, Ben also co-hosts as “The Man Who Knows Too Much About Batman” on the podcast Superhero Stuff You Should Know, an educational entertainment show that covers comic book films and unmade scripts, as well as performs improv sketches and interviews with actors and writers.