About the Bleikers
Hans, Annemarie & Jennifer Bleiker
We are a husband-and-wife, and now daughter too, firm.
You ask WHY we do what we do?
It’s not really about us, it’s about YOU — and the mission the public gave you.
Each of us had professional aspirations that had nothing to do with teaching, citizen participation, or even making government more effective.
Yet — here we are.
The three of us derailed ourselves from perfectly good, honorable, profitable careers (about which you can read more about below) —
— because we couldn’t let another public-sector professional fail to implement his/her mandate when we had the recipe to help them succeed.
Don’t let your work end up on a shelf
As we see it — if you work in a legitimate public agency — your work is downright VITAL.
Your expertise is worth too much to be wasted on developing proposals that don’t get implemented.
The public gave you your mission to address certain problems and opportunities.
The public NEEDS YOU to succeed in fulfilling your mission.
If you fail at accomplishing that mission, then we ALL fail — because those problems don’t go away.
Our methodology has an impressive track-record of giving professionals with important missions the tools to succeed.
We’ve trained between 30,000 and 40,000 public-sector professionals — people just like YOU.
We have a huge list of references, testimonials, and quotes.
If you work on legitimate problems, and use our approach to get your FIERCEST opponents’ Informed Consent, we can almost guarantee your ability to fulfill the mandate the public gave you.
That’s why for each of us, it feels fantastic to provide people like you with the tools to get the job done.
Making government more effective isn’t just good for public-sector professionals, it has healing effects for the community at large.
That, is why the three of us eagerly devote ourselves to teaching, mentoring, and coaching problem-solvers like you.
- We believe public agencies were meant to be Problem-Solving entities,
- Not to create bureaucratic red-tape.
- We believe you get up every morning because you understand how CRITICAL your mission is.
- Not so you can feed at the government trough.
- We believe, if your work is technically rigorous, lacking Informed Consent is the only thing that will keep you from fulfilling your mission.
- Not budget constraints, not the political climate, or NIMBY.
Growing up with Consent-Building jargon, I always found my parents’ work interesting, but wholly different from my desire to become a doctor of medicine.
(Nonetheless, it was great fun to practice their Consent-Building tactics when lobbying my parents for something — especially when I succeeded!)
After getting a Bachelor’s at Smith College in 1998, I began working as a Case Manager and Research Author for a pediatric malnutrition unit in Boston’s inner city.
There I saw how breakdowns in communication and trust resulted in serious issues for children, their families and public health in general.
Nearly all of the doctors I had worked with and studied under felt frustrated and ineffective because of these breakdowns, health care misunderstandings by patients, and even patient distrust of their doctors.
This reality shook me to the core.
I left Boston Medical Center and started part-time work for my parents so I could study for the medical entrance exams (MCATs), still determined I’d be unlike most doctors and feel effective — not frustrated.
Jennifer Bleiker, Instructor & Online Content Developer
Occasionally traveling with my parents to do training in New England, I constantly encountered long-time and new students of their Consent-Building methodology who strongly encouraged me “not to let their work die with them”, but to follow in their footsteps.
Over time, it occurred to me that when public agencies are successful in solving legitimate problems, in a responsible and responsive way — not only does the whole community benefit, but the negatively impacted opponents specifically experience tremendous healing effects.
Serving others, having a meaningful impact, and helping the underdog felt essential to me, and I realized I had a unique opportunity to do that by joining my parents in teaching their Consent-Building methodology.
While working for and learning from my parents, I earned a Master’s in Public Policy from New England College. I also became a professional firefighter/EMT, and a Fire Department’s Public Information Officer north of Boston.
Even with a mission as straight-forward as that of a firefighter/EMT, I witnessed how commonplace it was for there to be a lack of trust between supervisors/subordinates, council-members, residents, taxpayers, counterpart organizations, union leaders and administrators, and (perhaps less surprisingly) between the department and local journalists.
Five years later, I left the fire department when I married an Army officer and we started a family.
Even in this new sub-culture of the military, I discovered how natural it is for people to mistrust authority.
This was true even among Army spouses and family members; and an inbred reflex among the civilian world to distrust its military leaders.
In support of my husband’s role as a commander, I became a Family Readiness Group Advisor, which only reinforced the importance of being BOTH Responsible and Responsive, of having respect (but not necessarily being liked), and the importance of getting the Informed Consent of decision-makers.
Combining my time in healthcare, as a firefighter, military spouse, FRG advisor, my education, and over 15 years as a partner of the Institute for Participatory Management & Planning (IPMP) and co-trainer, I’m dedicating my life’s work to helping public-sector professionals be more effective at fulfilling their mission.
Of particular interest to me is how those in the public-sector should (not) use Social Media to develop Informed Consent — particularly of their proposals’ opponents. (My master’s thesis was on this topic, and I continue to research, write and present on it.)