Curriculum Vitae

Summary

Werner H. Erhard is a world renowned 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, 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 philosophy, business, education, psychotherapy, global development, medicine, 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 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, to include Bangladesh, India, Ethiopia, Mexico, Cambodia, Mozambique and many others.

A former member of the U.S. / Costa Rica Presidential Commission for Economic Recovery 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 hundreds of courses across the globe on leadership and creating transformative results. In addition to his intellectual contributions, Erhard has contributed over $3.9 million to various causes and organizations. He has consulted for numerous Fortune 100 corporations and governmental entities, including IBM, NASA, Lockheed, The Hartford Group and Africare to name a few.  Since Erhard’s founding of Erhard Seminars Training in 1971 more than two million people around the world have participated in his programs. Erhard is a leading thinker in the fields of philosophy, linguistics, leadership and management theory and practice.  Over the last 35 years Erhard’s ideas have been incorporated by a majority of Fortune 100 companies. In 1987 Erhard was recognized in Fortune magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue as a major innovative thinker in shaping modern management thinking about empowerment.

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”
2003	Humanitarian of the Year – Youth at Risk, Inc., New York
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)

 

Business History

1963 - 1970	Vice President, Parents Magazine Cultural Institute, a division of Grace & Company; Division Manager, The Grolier Society
1971	Founder, Erhard Seminars Training Inc. / est, an educational corporation
1981	Founder, Werner Erhard and Associates
1983	Co-Founder, Action Technologies Inc.
1984	Co-Founder, Paradigm 3 Satellite Network
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

 

FOUNDER, Charitable Organizations

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 organiztion empowering educators in accomplishing with their students what inspired them 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 Commission for Economic Recovery (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               

Northern Ireland Peace Process – in collaboration with Peter Block, designed Undertakings  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.

Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mexico and Bangladesh Projects - 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 to 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.

Center For Contextual Studies - 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.

Physics Conferences - 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).

 

Management & Consulting Methodologies Authored

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

Integrity, A Positive Theory

Being A Leader And The Effective Exercise of Leadership, An Ontological 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, 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.

“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.

 

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

“The Ontological Constraints Limiting Access to Leadership: What You Must Take Away to Create Access to Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Zaffron, Steve and Granger, Kari L.,  (April 2, 2009). 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=1238158.

“Course Materials for: Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership - An Ontological Model”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C., Zaffron, Steve and Granger, Kari L.,  (September 27, 2009). 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 .

“Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model (PDF File of Keynote Slides)”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C. and Granger, Kari L., (August 18, 2009). 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. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1392406 .

"Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality”, Erhard, Werner, Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve, (April 25, 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 Paradigm of Individual, Group and Organizational Performance", Erhard, Werner and Barbados Group, (September 28, 2009). 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.