Prior to 1971: Division Manager, Grolier Society Inc.; Instructor, Mind Dynamics; Vice President of Parent's Magazine's Cultural Institute, a division of Grace & Co.; Sales Management; and as a young man his first job was selling cars for Lee Iacocca

1971: Developed the est Training, based on transformational models and applications. Director of Research and Development, public speaker and one of the founding employees for Erhard Seminars Training, Inc., an education and seminar company based on transformational models

1973: Founder, The Foundation For the Realization of Man (subsequent name changed to The est Foundation and then The Werner Erhard Foundation), a charitable organization devoted to funding projects that had the potential to improve the quality of human life

1975: Director of Research and Development, public speaker and one of the founding employees for est, an educational corporation, an education and seminar company based on transformational models

1977: Co-founder, The Hunger Project, a charitable organization dedicated to education and to empowering organizations that combat hunger and starvation

1979: Founder, The Breakthrough Foundation, a charitable organization devoted to youths at risk

1980: Founder, The Holiday Project, a charitable organization devoted to contributing to people in hospitals and other institutions during the holidays

1981: Founder, Werner Erhard & Associates, an education and seminar company based on transformational models

1983: Co-founder, The Education Network, a charitable organization dedicated to reducing the dropout rate and generating other breakthroughs in education

1984: Created, along with Fr. Basil Pennington, the program Making A Difference: A Course For Those Who Minister, for the newly formed Mastery Foundation.

1983: Co-founder, Action Technologies, Inc., a business process management software company

1984: Co-founder, Paradigm 3 Satellite Network, a satellite leasing company

1984: Founder, Transformational Technologies Inc., a management consulting technology company utilizing transformational models and applications

1990: Founder, Tekniko Inc., a management consulting technology company utilizing transformational models and applications

1991: Retired

1995:  Fortune Magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue (May 15, 1995), in examining the major contributions to management thinking, recognized Werner Erhard’s creation of est as the major innovation of the 1970s in shaping modern management thinking toward empowering people. 

To the Present: While retired from public life, Werner Erhard has continued to work to make a difference in organizations and companies throughout the world. 

Mr. Erhard has been a guest lecturer at a wide variety of prestigious institutions and professional associations around the world, including Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, Yale University Law School,  the Kennedy Center For Public Leadership at Harvard, USC Marshall School of Business, the American Psychiatric Association, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, UNESCO, the Oxford Union at Oxford University, Stanford University, MIT, and the University of Rochester Simon School of Business.