Ariel Beery is the editor and publisher of PresenTense, co-founder and director of the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism, director of strategy and design for MavenHaven, co-editor of BlogsofZion, and a full time graduate student at NYU's Wagner School doing two master's degree--one in nonprofit management and the other in Judaic Studies. Ariel lectures and writes on topics pertaining to the Jewish People, its future, and Creative Zionism. Ariel is a graduate of Columbia University, where he majored in economics and political science, served as President of the School of General Studies Student Body, and was co-founder and co-coordinator of a lecture series on Minorities in the Middle East at Columbia. There he was a columist for the Columbia Spectator, a campus activist, and also an occasional submitter to the Columbia Political Review, and to other campus publications.

Ariel was a co-founder of the Creative Zionist Circle together with Aharon Horwitz in 2003.

Some more personal info:

Ariel was born and raised in New York City, and is a proud product of the New York Public School System--attending P.S.3, the Center School, and Stuyvesant High School.

Ariel was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair socialist-Zionist youth movement, served as the New York Regional Director in 1995, the General Secretary for Hashomer Hatzair in 1996. After a year at Wesleyan University he volunteered for a year of service to the movement in Israel, on Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, in 1998.

On Kerem Shalom, Ariel co-founded the First of May Project, later known as the Youth-to-Youth project, a Palestinian-Israeli umbrella youth movement that brought together youth movements from the socially-conscious left.

From 1999 till 2001, Ariel volunteered in the Israel Defense Forces, and served in the Nahal Brigade until he sustained an injury. He finished his service in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, where he wrote and translated information packets and was, among other things, a speech-writer for the Advisor for the Minister of Defense for Arab Affairs, David Haham.