History
Being First, Inc. was founded in 1988 by Dean Anderson and Linda Ackerman-Anderson through the merger of their two consulting firms, the Optimal Performance Institute and Linda S. Ackerman, Inc. Both Linda and Dean were early pioneers in human development and performance and organizational change process methodology in large organizations.
In 1991, the Being First office burned to the ground during the Oakland firestorm in California. Dean literally walked out of the flames with the company’s computer servers in tow, saving Being First’s intellectual property.
Over the next 3 years, Linda and Dean transformed this potential breakdown into a breakthrough – meticulously integrating and upgrading their methods.
This labor of love further honed Being First’s integrated System of Transformation and its change process methodology – The Change Leader’s Roadmap. It also generated Dean and Linda’s two highly regarded books: Beyond Change Management and the Change Leader’s Roadmap.
After the fire, most of the then “Big Six” consulting firms tried to buy Being First to gain their cutting edge intellectual property. Luckily, Linda and Dean passed on those opportunities.
Now, after 35 years of “practice,” our founders are continuing to grow our business and its global impact.
Our key strategies are to educate the marketplace about what is possible in personal and organizational transformation and how to achieve both, and to attract the world’s most competent, experienced, and awake change consultants and human performance facilitators into the Being First family. We are tasking ourselves with making our message and methodologies available to a larger global audience. We want to change how change is done in the world, so collectively we can co-create a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world.