Curriculum Vitae

(for Werner Erhard's Full Curriculum Vitae see wernererhard.net)

 

SUMMARY

Werner H. Erhard is recognized world-wide as a business, management, and humanitarian leader, with an esteemed record of accomplishment and achievement at the highest levels of U.S. national policy, international peace, reconciliation and development efforts, and leadership and management theory and practice. His creation of innovative ideas and models of individual, organizational and social transformation have impacted such diverse fields as business, education, philosophy, medicine, psychotherapy, developing countries, conflict resolution, and community building. Erhard is a recipient of the 1988 Mahatma Gandhi Humanitarian Award in honor of his “notable effort to end the starvation and hunger suffered by millions throughout the world” and is a Knight in the Sovereign Order of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem for his lifelong dedication to helping those in need. Erhard’s international accomplishments include peace and reconciliation efforts in Northern Ireland, business leader training as part of the U.S State Department’s Russia / U.S. Project, and a life history of contributions to impoverished regions of the world, including Bangladesh, India, Ethiopia, Mexico, Cambodia, Mozambique and many others.

A former member of the U.S. / Costa Rica Presidential Advisory Commission and Co-Founder of The Hunger Project, a global United Nations NGO committed to the sustainable end of abject poverty, Erhard has founded and led several global foundations and has a distinguished record of academic contributions, authored numerous publications, and led thousands of courses across the globe on leadership and creating transformative results. In addition to his intellectual contributions, Erhard has contributed millions of dollars and raised from his constituency countless millions more for various humanitarian causes and organizations. He has consulted for numerous Fortune 100 corporations and charitable and governmental entities, including IBM, NASA, Lockheed, The Hartford Group and Africare to name a few. In all, more than two million people around the world have participated in his programs. Erhard is a contributor in the fields of philosophy and language, and a leading thinker in leadership, management and integrity. His ideas have been incorporated by a majority of Fortune 100 companies and recognized by Fortune magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue as a major innovative thinker in shaping modern management thinking about empowerment over the last 35 years.  Social scientist Daniel Yankelovich said of a study he conducted on participants of one of Mr. Erhard’s programs for the general public: "Several of the study’s findings surprised me quite a bit, especially the large number of participants for whom The Forum proved to be 'one of the most valued experiences of my life'.  This is not a sentiment that people, especially successful, well-educated people, express lightly."

 

HONORS

1988	Mahatma Gandhi Humanitarian Award – Gandhi Memorial International Foundation - “In honor of your notable effort to end the starvation and hunger suffered by millions throughout the world and for drawing broad public awareness to the value of integrity in our everyday lives”
1984	Grand Cross of Merit – Sovereign Order of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem (Denmark)
1978	Knight of Grace, Sovereign Order of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem (Denmark)
2003	Humanitarian of the Year – Youth at Risk, Inc., New York

 

FOUNDER

The Werner Erhard Foundation - Non-profit organization that funds and fosters research, scholarly endeavors, and international crisis relief.

The Hunger Project - Non-profit, United Nations NGO working for the sustainable end of global hunger.

The Breakthrough Foundation -  Non-profit organization working with youth at risk.

The Holiday Project - Non-profit organization of volunteers who visit people confined to institutions during holidays and throughout the year.

The Education Network - Non-profit organization empowering educators in accomplishing with their students what inspired those educators to enter the educational field.

Prison Possibilities, Inc. - Non-profit organization to leave prisoners able to create a future for themselves not given by their past.

The Mastery Foundation - Non-profit organization enabling and empowering grassroots peace and reconciliation leaders.

The CareGivers Project - Non-profit organization empowering care givers to take care of themselves as well as those for whom they were caring so as to not be disabled by burnout.

 

BOARDS &  COMMISSIONS      

U.S. / Costa Rica Presidential Advisory Commission (Costa Rica)

Warren Bennis Leadership Circle, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard University

California Institute of Integral Studies

Global Hunger Project

The Holiday Project

National Black Theater

Friends of Conservation

 

NOTABLE UNDERTAKINGS               

Northern Ireland Peace Process – in collaboration with Peter Block, designed courses and trained clergy and grassroots leaders in transformation skills and perspectives in leadership and integrity to effect peace and reconciliation.

Consultant to Northern Ireland para-military entities to allow them to transform from armed militant status to empowered community support groups.     

Russia / U.S. Project – trained Russian business professors, emerging business men and women, and Russia’s first Parliamentarians to prepare them for effective leadership in rapidly changing legal, economic and business environments.

Integrated, worked with and supported numerous voluntary organizations to avert famine in Cambodia and Ethiopia, respond to earthquakes in Mexico, and combat the effects of flooding in Bangladesh.

Mozambique Project – supported shipment of over $5 million in goods donated by numerous corporations.

S.H.A.R.E. India – with Ramakrishna Bajaj built a charitable trust that established clinics to vaccinate children and educate mothers on how to protect infants from intestinal diseases.

With psychiatrist Dr. Robert Shaw, created and delivered a series of programs for over 1,400 psychotherapists to free them from the constraints imposed on their practice of therapy by their network of unexamined ideas, beliefs, biases, social and cultural embedded-ness, and taken-for-granted assumptions.

Sponsored ten Annual Theoretical Physics Conferences that each year brought together 15 leaders in the field to work on major unresolved issues in the field (referenced in The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics, by Leonard Susskind, Little, Brown and Company, July 2008).

 

BUSINESS HISTORY

1963 - 1970	Vice President, Parents Magazine Cultural Institute, a division of Grace & Company (child development materials)
1970 - 1971	Division Manager, The Grolier Society
1971	Founder, Erhard Seminars Training Inc. / est, an educational corporation.
1981	Founder, Werner Erhard and Associates
1981	Co-Founder, International Philosophy Corporation
1983	Co-Founder, Center for Contextual Studies
1983	Co-Founder, Action Technologies Inc.
1984	Co-Founder, Paradigm 3 Satellite Network
1984	Founder, Custom Marine Technologies, Inc.
1984	Founder, Transformational Technologies Inc. / Tekniko Inc.
1988	Founder, Werner Erhard and Associates International Inc.
1971 - present	Speaker, Lecturer and Consultant – clients include IBM, Monsanto, The Hartford Group, Lockheed, Boeing, and other Fortune 100 companies, Index Systems, NASA, USAID, Africare, Ethiopia Working Group, various NGOs, Universities and Non-Profit Organizations

 

INDIVIDUAL & ORGANIZATIONAL METHODOLOGIES AUTHORED

The est Training

The Forum

Critical Success Factors

Masterful Coaching: The Art of Management

Introduction to Organizational Transformation

The Tekniko Technology: An Entry Conversation for New and/or Prospective Clients

Being “Multilingual” – Consulting and Leading with Transformational Technology in the Background

Marketing Transformational Technology

Ownership: The Distinction Owner

Packaging Transformational Technology for Emerging Business

Packaging Transformational Technology for Large Clients

Executive Excellence Program

Recreating a Leader’s Intention

Distinguishing Vision

Creating Vision

Chaos: An Advanced Intensive in the Distinctions of the Technology

Designing Communication Courses for Business

Enabling Reengineering

Concern Cascade Technology

Strategy Technology

Breakdown/Breakthrough Technology

Mission Control: Managing Everything There is to Do and Have

A New Model of Integrity

Being A Leader And The Effective Exercise of Leadership, An Ontological/Phenomenological Model

New Paradigm of Performance

 

INVITED LECTURES

Educational Institutions

Yale Law School, Yale School of Management, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, United States Air Force Academy, Oxford University (England), University of Munich (Germany), Erasmus University School of Management (Rotterdam, Netherlands), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, University of Rochester Simon Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, DePaul University, Texas A&M University, University of Nebraska, College of Marin, California Institute of Technology, Gruter Institute, Academy of Sciences (Moscow, USSR), Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age, Znaniye Society (Moscow, USSR), Student Youth Institute of Bombay (India), City College Lecture Series on the Politics of World Hunger, Association of Elementary School Administrators of Los Angeles, Third Annual Convention of Instructors, Symposium for Educators. 

Health Institutions

Congress of German Psychiatrists and Psychologists, Kings College Hospital (London, England), California State Psychological Association, California Association of School Psychologists and Psychometrists, Mount Zion Hospital School of Psychiatry, American Psychiatric Association, National Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Conference, 6th World Congress of Social Psychiatry, Yeshiva University Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, 6th International Congress of Group Psychotherapy, American Dietetic Association, National Health Federation, American Orthopsychiatric Association, Sequoia Hospital, California Dental Association, International Transactional Analysis Association, University of Louisville School of Medicine.

Government and Business

American Management Association, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School, Advertising Club of India, Public Relations Society of India, Bombay Management Association, Indian Institute of Management, Lockheed, International Cybernetics Society, Wight/Collins/Rutherford/Scott (London), Index Systems, The Hunger Project-India, Sevagaram Foundation, City of Chicago, NASA, IBM, Monsanto, Ken Blanchard Corporate Trainers Program, Transformational Technologies Inc., U.S. State Department Ethiopia Drought Working Group, Academy of the National Economy (Moscow), Center for Management Consulting (Moscow), International Business School of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Relations, Academy of Social Sciences (Moscow), U.S. State Department sponsored at the Soviet Institute of Philosophy (Moscow), Academy of Management, Open World Association

Other

National Association of Police Community Relations Officers, The May Lectures (London), State of California Department of Corrections, UNESCO, Esalen Institute, Young Presidents’ Organization, The Mastery Foundation, Center for Contextual Studies, Africare Development Team, and numerous others.

 

PUBLICATIONS     

“The Mind’s Dedication to Survival”, by Werner Erhard, Gilbert Guerin and Robert Shaw, The Journal of Individual Psychology, Volume 31, Number 1, May, 1975.

“The est Standard Training”, by Werner Erhard and Victor Gioscia, Ph.D., The Journal of Individual Psychology, Volume 31, Number 1, May, 1975.

“The End of Starvation: Creating An Idea Whose Time Has Come”, by Werner Erhard, The Hunger Project, 1977.

“est: Communication in a Context of Compassion”, by Werner Erhard and Victor Gioscia, Ph.D., The Journal of Current Psychiatric Therapies, 1978.

“Some Aspects of the est Training and Transpersonal Psychology: A Conversation”, by Werner Erhard and James Fadiman, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 9, No. J, 1977.

“You Don’t Alter What You Know, You Alter the Way You Know It: A Conversation with Werner Erhard about The est Training, Philosophy, “Enlightenment,” Authoritarianism and Legitimate Authority, Arrogance, Leadership and Vision”, The Network Review, Northeast Edition, Volume 1, Number 4, September 1983. Audio recording at Internet Archive

“Being Well” by Werner Erhard, Victor Gioscia, Ph.D. and Ken Anbender, Ph.D., Chapter 5 in Beyond Health and Normality: Explorations of Exceptional Psychological Well-being, Edited by Roger Walsh, M.B., Ph.D., MRANZCP and Deane H. Shapiro, Jr., Ph.D., Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1983.

“Ethiopia, 1988”, by Werner Erhard, The Union Leader, Manchester, N.H., January 12, 1989.

“In Training, Free Choice is the Key”, by Werner Erhard, The Atlanta Constitution, October 11, 1989.

"Bill Bartley: Biographer Extraordinary," in the book Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part 1 Influences from Mises to Bartley, edited by Dr. Robert Leeson, Visiting Professor of Economics at Stanford University, Springer, 2013

“Creating Leaders:  An Ontological/Phenomenological Model”, Werner Erhard, Michael C Jensen, and Kari Granger - Chapter 16 in The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being, Edited by Scott A. Snook, Nitin Nohria, and Rakesh Khurana, Sage Publications, Inc., 2011.

Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility for Being Human, by Bruce Hyde, PhD and Drew Kopp, PhD; Wiley, 2019 - Werner Erhard's ideas and methodology are presented through a transcript of The Forum led by Erhard in San Francisco in December of 1989. This study is a comparative analysis of Erhard’s rhetorical project and the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger.

 

IN-PROCESS PUBLICATIONS     

Electronic copies of abstracts, papers and course materials are available at Werner Erhard’s author page at SSRN:  http://ssrn.com/author=433651

“Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C. and Granger, Kari L., (March 2010). Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 09-124; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 09-01; Gruter Institute Squaw Valley Conference 2009: Law, Behavior & the Brain; Simon School Working Paper No. FR 09-27. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1392406.

“The Transformational Experiences that Leave Ordinary People Being Leaders, Access to a Context that Uses You, and Education as Stretching the Mind”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Granger, Kari L. (April 2010).  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1513400.

“Introductory Reading for Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Zaffron, Steve and Granger, Kari L., (April 2010). Harvard Business School Negotiations, Organizations and Markets Unit Research Paper Series No. 09-022; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 08-01; Simon School Working Paper No. 08-02; Gruter Institute Squaw Valley Conference 2009: Law, Behavior & the Brain. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1585976

“Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Zaffron, Steve and Granger, Kari L., (October 2010). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 09-038; Simon School Working Paper No. 08-03; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 08-02. Available at SSRN:  http://ssrn.com/abstract=1263835

“CREATING LEADERS WORKSHOP: Mastering the Principles and Effective Delivery of ‘the Ontological Leadership Course’ (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Granger, Kari L., DiMaggio, Joseph J., (July 2010).  Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 11-002.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1638429

“Creating Leaders: An Ontological Model”, Chapter 16 in THE HANDBOOK FOR TEACHING LEADERSHIP, Scott Snook, Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, eds., Sage Publications, 2011, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Granger, Kari L. (October 2010).  Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 11-037; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 10-10; Simon School Working Paper No. FR-10-30.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1681682

“Living With Mastery: Where Life Actually Happens (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)", Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., DiMaggio, Joseph J. (January 2011).  Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 11-067; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 11-01.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1720884

“Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve, (March 23, 2008). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 06-11; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 06-03; Simon School Working Paper No. FR 08-05. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=920625.

“A New Model of Integrity: An Actionable Pathway to Trust, Productivity and Value (PDF File of Keynote Slides)”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve (November 2009).  Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 07-01; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 07-01; 1st IESE Conference on “Humanizing the Firm and the Management Profession” Presentation.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=932255

“Integrity: Where Leadership Begins – A New Model of Integrity” (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve (June 2007).  Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 07-03; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 07-03.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=983401

“Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics, and Legality – Abridged”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Zaffron, Steve (March 2010).  Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 10-061; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 10-01; Simon School Working Paper No. 10-07.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1542759

“A New Model of Integrity: The Missing Factor of Production (PDF file of Keynote and PowerPoint Slides)”, Jensen, Michael C., Granger, Kari L., Erhard, Werner (March 2010).  Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 10-087; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 10-03.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1559827.

“Beyond Agency Theory: The Hidden and Heretofore Inaccessible Power of Integrity (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)”, Jensen, Michael C., Erhard, Werner (February 2010).  Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 10-068; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 10-02.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1552009

“A Value-Free Approach to Values (Pdf File PowerPoint Slides)”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., (July 2010).  Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper 11-010.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1640302

“How Language Shapes the World: A New Model Providing Actionable Access to the Source of Performance”, Erhard, Werner, (October 28, 2009). Barbados Group Working Paper No. 09-03.  Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1483082

“A New Paradigm of Individual, Group and Organizational Performance”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C. and Barbados Group, (July 2010). Barbados Group Working Paper No. 09-02. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1437027

Barbados Group Members: Sir Christopher Ball, Peter Block, Allan L. Cohen, Joseph J. DiMaggio, Werner Erhard, Bruce Gregory, Michael C. Jensen, Olga Loffredi, David C. Logan, Brian Regnier, Robert H. Rosen, Harry Rosenberg, Allan L. Scherr, Steve Zaffron, Michael E. Zimmerman, Mark A. Zupan.