OUR STORY

In 2009...

Susan Olesek cut her teeth learning how to teach the Enneagram in prison.

Among her first incarcerated students were a serial bank robber, a man on the FBI’s “most dangerous” list, a gang leader of the Norteños, and a Ph.D. student with a 16-year crystal meth addiction. As they took up the work of self awareness with courage, they showed Susan the real purpose of the Enneagram, and that freedom is an inside job.

Inspired and convicted, in 2012, Susan founded Enneagram Prison Project, a nonprofit with a vision to free people from the prisons of our own making. As she immersed herself in carceral systems from Finland to San Quentin, she was hired to share her compassionate approach to the Enneagram with a wildly diverse group of people–from CEOs, to lifers, high schoolers, psychologists, parents, and correctional officers. She called herself a Human Potentialist, who saw that people are people.

In 2021, with her heart a thousand feet deep in our prisons and jails, Susan founded The Human Potentialists, a benefit corporation now democratizing the Enneagram for the greatest human good.

We are gentle disruptors.

The Human Potentialists are fierce lovers of humanity, who know that everything is connected.

We are a team of Enneagram practitioners determined to teach the curriculum the way we learned it "on the inside"—everywhere else.  We are working with c-suites, small teams, institutions, nonprofits, and everywhere else. We are changing the way people see themselves, and the way we see each other.

We are holding the door open to learning the Enneagram, a profound psychological system which has always been meant for everyone.

An intentional collective of Enneagram practitioners offering self-awareness programs in service of all people - everywhere.

Copyright © 2025