Bennett “Ben” Warburton Sutton passed away on Sunday, March 26, 2023, in Arlington, Virginia, after a two-year fight with lung cancer. Ben was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on August 16, 1973, to Richard and Ginny (Morris) Sutton and grew up in northern Virginia. He graduated from Madison High School in Vienna, VA in 1991 and earned his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Mary Washington in 1995 and his master’s degree in economics from George Washington University in 2000. He was a Senior Research Officer for the International Monetary Fund, where he had worked and cultivated a global network of friends and colleagues since 1999. With many of his colleagues, he shared a passion for world affairs, following and engaging in cheerful debate about current events. A natural team-builder, Ben served as his department’s Peer for a Respectful Workplace representative, tasked with promoting a caring work environment and helping colleagues in distress. Throughout his career, Ben’s colleagues and friends found him to be a mentor and catalyst for their careers, a consummate connector of people, and an enthusiastic asset on the soccer field and badminton court.
Ben made his home in Arlington with his wife, Bethany Zecher Sutton, whom he met when they were undergraduate students at Mary Washington. He introduced her to family summer vacations in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and she took him to the mountains and lakes of New England. Together they introduced their children, Luna and Cara, to domestic and world travel. Ben’s passion for travel took him from a post-college internship in Budapest to personal and business travel in Europe, Canada, the Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, Mexico, Panama, South America, and across the US. As a traveler, Ben loved to explore neighborhoods on foot to get a true sense of a place and its people.
