Doug Breitbart
Doug was born and raised in New York City’s Greenwich Village. By the end of high school, he had been around the world, witnessed the Monkey Dance in Bali, funeral pyres in Benares, the Taj Mahal, animal sacrifices in Kathmandu, the monasteries of Mt. Athos, the beauty of Kashmir, the hand weaving of silk rugs in Iran, the power of Stonehenge, and the marvels of the Louvre and the Tate.
He participated in archeological work in the Aleutians, survival and rock climbing training in the Wind River Mountains, advanced scuba certification in the Caribbean, and was involved with several film production companies and projects as a production assistant and film editor.
As an introverted undergraduate English major at Columbia College, an accidental casting in a production of Henry Fielding’s *Tom Thumb* led to classes at Herbert Berghof Studio, and performing in thirteen productions over the next two years.
To underwrite his acting addiction, he found himself a Research Assistant at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, working on the dawning days of Satellite Remote Sensing Data Analysis, as a graduate student in the Geography Department of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
It was at this time that Doug found himself generally disconnected, subtly depressed, and challenged by an inability to perform in any role requiring the representation of joy or laughter. It would be fair to say his level of self-awareness, and ability to feel or connect with others was at an all time low. He stopped acting, left Goddard and enrolled in Fordham Law School.
While in law school, he had the experience of being a summer associate with a medium sized NY corporate law firm, both summers following first and second year. He was paired with a fifth year senior associate who, by the time he completed his JD, had given Doug a clear enough vision of large firm life sufficient to realize that he was functionally unemployable; knowing what he was doing, what he was getting paid, and the rate at which he was being billed out at to the client.
He determined to take an entrepreneurial path. His interest in entertainment was completely intellectual, rooted in a fascination with the idea that it, and professional sports, were the only two fields where people pay others to pay attention to their “product.” In the industry, there was film, the high roller room, $1 million and up to play, television was the $500,000 dollar ante, theatre the $100,000 table, and the music business the two dollar table and slot machines where anyone could play.
After passing the New York bar in 1983, he hung out an entertainment law shingle based on his past encounters with film and theatre, formed a talent management company, and began managing bands and musicians.
His connection, on an emotional level, to music notwithstanding 15 years of piano lessons, was virtually non-existent. His emotional life, notwithstanding relationships, the same. He knew no one in the entertainment industry, had no capital; so the music business was where the door was open to play, but the aspiration was always to make it to being in the film business.
Over the following 8 years, he went on to serve as publisher, manager and production company for an array of artists, two of which achieved pop chart success, the first with a Top Ten Pop hit; and the second with triple platinum album sales from five Top Five singles, the fifth going #1 on the Billboard Pop Singles Charts.
At that point Doug had 26 employees, four offices in as many states, and two recording studios. The day that happened, he had absolutely zero emotional awareness, connection, or meaningful experience of that achievement.
He was married, with first child on the way, and he found himself confronted with a catastrophic failure of the business he had built. In the crucible of that failure, he withdrew from the industry, embarked on a mixture of consulting and entrepreneurial endeavors in which he discovered one of his superpowers.
He learned that his ability to assist someone who has a vision and a blank sheet of paper, to flesh out the greatest grandest version of that vision 5 years out, and fill in the blanks and details to get from here to there, down to the toilet paper in the bathroom and the paperclips on the desks was his superpower.
He also learned that if he did not also learn how to assist them to grow, through that process, into a level of self-awareness and consciousness that would enable them to actually own and internalize the businesses they imagined, with the scale and scope of success that was possible, it was for naught. Entrepreneurial success requires not just a plan, but an entrepreneur who is fully realized and capable of shepherding their own creation.
But this skill was as a human doing, not as a human being. Determined to find his true self (which at the time was expressed as: “I want to feel better”), he enrolled in an Adlerian-based weekend workshop that changed his life. It reawakened a nascent level of consciousness and self-awareness, and his emotional capacity and health. This set him on a path of personal growth and development 22 years ago, in 1998, that continues to this day.
In 2000 he embarked on a learning journey that included becoming: a Certified Instructor of The Living Course, the workshop that had changed his life years before; becoming certified to instruct a parenting course, Redirecting Children’s Behavior, involving teaching parents how to parent their children without violence, from a place of unconditional love.
He became a Life Coach, with a private practice; and co-evolved an Integral Law practice that involves representing all parties to a transaction, to evolve their vision and agreements by and between each other; and then, to inoculate their generative work from their individual counsels’ interceding and seeking to distort the agreements made, out of zealous representation of the client, and misguided professional values.
He has spent the last several years, with a colleague based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fabian Szulanski, stripping away, unlearning, and de-programing themselves from the current cultural paradigm, rooted in fear, scarcity, competition, and projections of power, control and authority over; and to formulation of a new kind of consciousness and consulting, rooted in the idea of catalyzing values and human being-centered transformative processes and change in organizational settings, of, by and for the people who comprise them.
Doug is involved, with others, in formulating decentralized systemic solutions to the scaling of reforestation efforts in service to reversing global warming and the extinction event manifesting in slow motion before our eyes. He has co-authored with Fabian *Transcending Personal Apocalypse: Replace Your Beliefs, Revitalize Your Future*; which seeks to assist those who have faced life changing challenges with a reference that can assist them with regaining their life’s footing and momentum.
He began to pursue fieldwork as it relates to his values work, by participating in, hosting, and supporting the creation of online conversational events, groups, and organizations; where the focus has been primarily devoted to exploring and learning how to create meaningful, substantial, and self-sustaining connections by and between the participants, both independent of or in some cases focused on a particular agenda or shared goal.
He has spent approximately 30 hours per week, for the past 4 years, in these conversational spaces, as a practice, and commitment to learning how we can do us differently, and hopefully achieve a difference and change in our impact on each other and our world.
Out of this work within the context of Enlivening Edge’s Community Conversations, with his colleague Will Van Inwagen, the seeds for Being in Systems were rooted. Will and Doug co-evolved those gatherings into an Emergent Conversation Service offering; along with the complementary offering, The Values Audit, co-created by Doug and Fabian as the co-founders of, and under the auspices of The Values Foundation.
Doug’s work with Tina Gattermann on development of the 2BElemental practice and offerings employed by Being in Systems has provided the foundation for Being in Systems Insight Services, providing an elemental understanding and perspective for analyzing and diagnosing organizational needs, challenges, and strategies for transformation.
Doug lives with his wife and two dogs in Southwest Michigan; and he remains devoted to trees, big sky, jazz, studies in human spirituality, and the act of human collaborative co-creation in all forms.