Landmark Worldwide

Landmark Worldwide (known as Landmark Education before 2013), or simply Landmark, is an American employee-owned for-profit company that offers personal-development programs, with their most-known being the Landmark Forum. It is one of several large-group awareness training programs.

Several sociologists and scholars of religion have classified Landmark as a "new religious movement" (NRM), while others have called it a "self-religion", a "corporate religion", and a "religio-spiritual corporation". Landmark has sometimes been described as a cult. Some religious experts dispute this claim, pointing out that Landmark does not meet some characteristics of cults, including being a religious organization, or having a central leader. Landmark has been criticized for the stress it puts on participants while it tries to convert them to a new worldview and for its recruitment tactics: Landmark does not use advertising, but instead pressures participants during courses to recruit relatives and friends as new customers.

As part of the Human Potential Movement, which was centered in San Francisco, Werner Erhard created and ran the est (Erhard Seminars Training) system from 1971 to 1984, which promoted the idea that individuals are empowered when they take personal responsibility for all events in their lives, both good and bad. In 1985, Erhard modified est to be gentler and more business oriented and renamed it the Landmark Forum. In 1991, he sold the company and its concepts to some of his employees, who incorporated it as Landmark Education Corporation, which was restructured into Landmark Education LLC in 2003, and then renamed Landmark Worldwide LLC in 2013. Its subsidiary, the Vanto Group, markets and delivers training and consulting to organizations.

Werner Erhard, creator of the Erhard Seminars Training (EST or est) changed the name of the organization to the Landmark Forum in 1985. He had been working on the idea for the Forum starting around 1983. Erhard also changed the content to be gentler and somewhat more business oriented. The first forum events cost $525 per person and were $50 more expensive than est. Erhard also created a "Young People's Forum" for children ages 6 to 12 with same cost as an adult event.

In 1991, Erhard sold the intellectual property rights associated with the Forum's concepts to some of his employees, (including his brother Harry Rosenberg who became CEO) who incorporated into "Landmark Education Corporation". Landmark paid Erhard $3 million as an initial licensing fee, with additional payments over the next 18 years not to exceed $15 million. The new company offered similar courses and employed many of the same staff. The Forum was reduced in length from four days to three, and its price is about 50% of the cost of the est courses. It was still considered very challenging, lasting 39 hours for each forum. In 2001, Rosenberg stated that Landmark had completely purchased the licenses to all of Erhard's concepts and all divisions of the company.

In 2003, Landmark Education Corporation was re-structured into Landmark Education LLC, and in 2013 it was renamed Landmark Worldwide LLC. Landmark Worldwide states that it operates as a for-profit company, whose employees own all the shares of the corporation. The company states that it invests its surpluses "into making its programs, initiatives, and services more widely available."

The company reported in 2019 that more than 2.4 million people had participated in its programs since 1991. Landmark holds seminars in approximately 125 locations in more than 21 countries. Landmark's revenue surpassed $100 million in 2018, with profits of about $5 million. The organization has 500 employees, and about 7,500 volunteers, an unusually large number of volunteers for a for-profit company. Their use of volunteers prompted three separate investigations by the United States Department of Labor, which concluded without requiring Landmark to make any changes to their practices.