From a young age, Ken Peters idolized his brother, Barry. Older by seven years and a hero in Ken’s eyes, Barry excelled in sports, joined the Marines, graduated summa cum laude with an MA in Finance and aspired to become an economist. However, he was never able to pursue the career for personal reasons and settled down with his family while doing venture capital.
“I had already taken the LSATs. I was ready to go to law school,” said Peters. “But Barry said, ‘Lawyers are a dime a dozen. Become an economist.’”
With an urge to follow his brother’s ambitions, Peters attended the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1965 and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. Later, he became an international economist who assisted political leaders with healthcare systems and currently teaches economics to international students at Florida International University post-retirement.
But Peters has now pursued a new passion: writing thriller novels. Based on his experiences abroad, his stories revolve around the usage of biotechnology in a futuristic setting. His latest book published in 2024, “The Seed Sanctuary”, is no different. However, it has quickly become an award-winning novel and continues to garner more acclaim than others in his collection.
Born in New York, Peters, 76, moved to California as a child and attended Long Beach High School. After he returned to New York and graduated in 1969 from CUNY, Peters attained his Master’s in Economic Urban Development at the University of New Mexico in 1972, where he took an urban architecture course that spurred him to move to London for a PhD in the same field.
“[My professor] talked a lot about the building of churches, the stained glass windows and the idea that people would work so hard on something they [will] never see in a lifetime,” Peters continued. “And it emblazoned me about people that live in local areas and cities. I think that was a catalyst to send me to England.”
After he completed his PhD, he spent a year teaching at the University of Arizona before applying for a sales position at Abbott Laboratories with hopes of traveling the world. After four years in two domestic divisions, he applied to join Abbott’s international division and became a Caribbean manager for the Abbott Diagnostics division. He was assigned to Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Colombia.
Peters later left Abbott and was recruited by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in their diagnostics division as a world marketing manager operating out of Sweden. He became dissatisfied with how large corporations handled healthcare in third-world countries and left the company in 1995. Peters created his own business, World Diagnostics Inc., the same year.
“I understood as an economist, having come out of the field of healthcare diagnostic medicine, that people [in underdeveloped countries] need medical care, but they can’t get medical care unless they have [Western-style] insurance,” Peters explained.
At World Diagnostics Inc., Peters and others created proprietary rapid diagnostics tests and sold them to hospitals and laboratories worldwide. He sold World Diagnostics Inc. to a Japanese biotech company in Sep. 2002.
A month later, he became CEO of GlobalEmed, where he distributed rapid infectious disease diagnostic tests to 55 countries. Peters also opened the first U.S. manufacturing facility in Africa to create rapid HIV diagnostic tests and settled in Cape Town.
In 2010, he retired from his position and returned to the U.S., where he taught at universities including Baruch, Berkeley and Nova Southeastern. He then applied and was hired by former Economics Department Chair Cem Karayalcin as a visiting professor for the Global First-Year program at Florida International University, where he began teaching first-year international students.
“He’s very engaged with developing economies and people from developing economies as well,” said Karayalcin when asked why he hired Peters. “I thought he was a very smart person and very articulate. So he seemed like a good fit as a teacher of economics to us.”
Peters still teaches at FIU, where he is beloved by many. Through his time as an international economist, he connects with his students and makes them feel more comfortable in a foreign country.
“Having him as a professor during my first semester was just great,” said Rachele Orsini, a student from Italy who took Peters’ class in 2023. “He was so caring, so empathetic and so human. And it was such a gift.”
While Peters enjoys teaching at FIU, he considers one of his greatest achievements to be his thriller novels, which are inspired by his travels as a healthcare economist and use biotechnology as a means for the future.
His passion for creative writing resulted in his first book, “The Cure”, which was published in 2021. The book follows a biotechnologist who exposes a plan to taint an HIV vaccine in Africa. It is based on the political and social turmoil that Peters witnessed first hand in 2004 due to the remnants of colonialism and the rise of the African National Congress in South Africa.
Peters also credits the beginning of his novel writing to Les Stein and his wife, Peggy. The couple, who have been friends with Peters for over 20 years and are avid thriller readers who have encouraged him to continue to write about his experiences abroad through fiction.
“I think he gives me credit because the first book I read, ‘Cuba’s Nuclear Piñata’, I found very, very interesting,” said Les. “I had told him he needs to keep writing. He’s a great storyteller.”
But Peters’ rise as an author can be traced to his new series, “Mossad Chronicles,” which revolves around Mossad agents who save the world from the misuse of biotechnology.
In the first book, “The Hajj Intercept”, childhood friends Saul and David are Mossad agents in the IDF and find their lives changed when a rocket kills Saul’s wife and daughters. Saul plots his revenge, while David hunts down his best friend to stop a viral pathogen catastrophe that would kill millions.
The second book in the series, “The Seed Sanctuary,” is gaining more notoriety. A standalone sequel to “The Hajj Intercept,” it takes place in 2030 and details the creation of a “Super Agri-seed” that could increase crop yield by fourfold — a way to address food insecurity caused by climate change. Meanwhile, European fascist political parties steal the Super Agri-seeds and plan to destroy them in an attempt to starve the poor who migrate from Africa to Europe. Mossad Agent Solomon Katz soon finds out about the plot and ventures into a dangerous mission to retrieve the seeds before it’s too late.
Published as an e-book in Feb. 2024 and paperback in April, “The Seed Sanctuary” has already won the BookViral Crimson Quill Award and the Chatham Book Foundation Shortlist Award. Peters says he has also been approached about a movie based on the novel.
But he hopes that his novel can highlight his underlying message about the severity of food insecurity in developing countries and climate change amid recent skepticism against climate scientists.
“In the state of Florida, the word ‘climate change’ has been removed,” said Peters. “But we have to realize that climate change has to be [dealt] with. We have to change the way we consume our energy from the sun. It’s all gonna go away!”
