Dr. Linda P. Beckerman is a recent escapee from Corporate America. Prior to her escape she spent over 20 years as a Program Manager for the USAF and several U.S. Defense Contractors. She quickly gained a reputation for her ability to take an immature technology out of the research lab and successfully transition it to engineering and production. Her reward for this talent was to be handed multi-million dollar programs in dire trouble to salvage and restore to successful track. As she salvaged each program, she was handed yet another, since the defense industry has no shortage of badly managed programs.
During this time, she became a student of the late Col. John Boyd (USAF, Ret'd), who is considered by many to be the greatest military strategist the United States military ever produced. From him she learned "not to let the system own" her and that what really matters is to "survive on your own terms". As a result, she quit being a salaried employee and became an independent consultant. She refused jobs from customers who merely wanted advice and only accepted those where she had an active role in straightening out the customers' problems. Her customers included a U.S. Defense Department Joint Program Office and U.S. and International corporations. While a consultant, she also held regular staff positions on several company organization charts.
As a female in mostly male dominated engineering fields, the role of independent consultant was a huge success since her earnings doubled while working only half the amount of time previously spent while salaried. She also had a lot of fun. The bad news was many stretches of time living in hotels away from home.
In a moment of sheer insanity Dr. Beckerman agreed to teach a graduate level systems engineering course at the University of Central Florida, an experience she did not repeat.
As a typical corporate clone, Dr. Beckerman published a lot of papers. These span a large variety of scientific and technical subjects. As an independent consultant she published four more papers, all related to the application of complexity science.
Dr. Beckerman has now achieved full financial independence. While she is not independently wealthy, being independently lower class isn't bad either. She gets to wear her pajamas and slippers all day if she wishes. She lives on 5.67 acres in the rural southern countryside where she has four hens and a rooster. They are healthy and run around in the green grass and sunshine and the hens lay eggs that taste the way they are supposed to and aren't filled with hormones and antibiotics. She also has a large flower garden, a small vegetable garden, and many fruit trees and berry bushes.
Her dream for now and the future is to be a radical political journalist. She wants to wake everybody up because this is the only planet we have and we are all on it together.