Werner Erhard

Werner Hans Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg; September 5, 1935) is an American lecturer known for founding Erhard Seminars Training (est), which was offered from 1971 to 1984. In 1985, he replaced the est programs with a newly designed program, the Forum. Since 1991, the Forum has been kept up to date and offered by Landmark Education.

In 1977, Erhard, with the support of Dana Meadows, John Denver, Robert W. Fuller, and others, founded The Hunger Project, an NGO accredited by the United Nations in which more than four million people have participated with the goal of establishing "the end of hunger as an idea whose time has come".

In 1991, Erhard retired from business and sold his existing intellectual property to his employees, who then adopted the name Landmark Education, renamed Landmark Worldwide in 2013.

In the 1990s, Erhard lectured, taught programs, and consulted in the Soviet Union and then the Russian Republic, Japan, and Northern Ireland.

In 2004, Erhard partnered with Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Michael C. Jensen in writing, lecturing, and teaching classes on integrity, leadership, and performance. Erhard's ideas have had an impact in academia and management and an influence on the culture at large.

John Paul Rosenberg was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 1935. His father was a small-restaurant owner who left Judaism for a Baptist mission and then joined his wife in the Episcopalian denomination where she taught Sunday school. They agreed that their son should choose his religion when he was old enough. He chose to be baptized in the Episcopal Church, served for eight years as an acolyte and has remained an Episcopalian.

Rosenberg attended Norristown High School in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where he received the English award in his senior year. He graduated in June 1953, along with his future wife Patricia Fry, whom he married on September 26, 1953; they had four children.^{[page needed]}

In 1960, Rosenberg deserted his wife and their children in Philadelphia. Rosenberg and June Bryde assumed false identities and traveled to Indianapolis. He chose the name "Werner Hans Erhard" from Esquire magazine articles he had read about West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard and physicist Werner Heisenberg. Bryde changed her name to Ellen Virginia Erhard. The Erhards moved to St. Louis, where Werner took a job as a car salesman.