About

ActivInsight was founded in 2004 by Andrew Bernstein as a new approach to developing resilience and mastering change.

Bernstein became interested in resilience and change as a teenager when his father and little sister died unexpectedly. Filled with questions about how to handle life's challenges more effectively, he started exploring philosophy, understanding only bits of what he read.

Bernstein then attended John Hopkins University intending to study medicine and creative writing, but was seduced by the English department, who taught him not only how to understand the philosophy he was reading, but also how to think critically. Bernstein graduated Phi Beta Kappa and began a Ph.D. in literature after college, but more personal challenges arose. So Bernstein dropped out of graduate school, focusing his attention on resilience and change.

Over the next fifteen years, he studied a wide range of traditional and alternative approaches to transformation, including three years working closely with self-help author Byron Katie. In 2004, Bernstein integrated his experiences into something new. He recognized that real transformation takes place through insight, but insight tends to happen passively. So he created a technique called ActivInsight that distills the essence of having a breakthrough into seven simple steps.

ActivInsight has now been embraced by thousands of leaders at some of the world's best organizations as a shortcut to change mastery. Clients include Johnson & Johnson, U.S. Trust, Merrill Lynch, Coca-Cola, Google, Citigroup, Colgate-Palmolive, Twentieth-Century Fox, Genentech, WPP, Patagonia, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and others.

Bernstein teaches regularly as part of executive education at the world's leading business schools, as well as at not-for-profits where insight-based change has helped teens and adults deal with cancer, addiction, sexual discrimination, and other challenges.

Bernstein's first book, The Myth of Stress, (Free Press, 2010) debunks the modern stress concept and teaches readers a new way to understand and deal with stress. He is currently finishing a new book on change.

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