The AT&T Divestiture Project
JoAn Mann conducts independent stress resilience research while consulting on onboarding challenges. Partners with Dr. Stephen Mann on medical stress applications.
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1980-1982
Understanding People - the PREP Story
Reveal. Bridge. Build.
It Started With a Question
In the early 1980s, JoAn Mann was building a career around a simple question: what helps people thrive at work?
She had the credentials—dual undergrad degrees, an MBA in human resource management, master-level certification in NLP. Her research focused on job success probability and workplace stress. That expertise took her across the U.S., Canada, and Europe—developing leadership programs for tech companies, banks, Fortune 500 corporations, and universities.
She began every session with a personality assessment. It was meant to open the door to an enlightening and engaging conversation for everyone.
It didn’t.
Cumbersome Tools, Wrong Answers
The assessments at the time were cumbersome—20, 30, even 60 minutes long. The language felt stiff, outdated, even judgmental. Clients walked away feeling labeled, not understood. Results failed to translate across cultures and generations. Once the results were in, no one could answer the question: what do I do with this?
Then came AT&T.
Simple Labels for Complex People. That was a Problem.
In 1982, the U.S. government was dismantling the telecommunications monopoly. Senior engineers were being forced to give up intellectual property they’d spent careers developing. The human toll was devastating—depression, burnout, turnover in critical positions halting entire teams.
JoAn Mann was brought in to help with onboarding and recruiting. She used existing personality assessments, but they couldn’t explain why some people thrived while others failed. The missing piece turned out to be what she now calls Personal Resilience.
That frustration became her mission.
Building Something To Meet the Challenge
JoAn partnered with statistician Dr. Bob Houston to build an assessment that was fast, respectful, grounded in research, and genuinely useful. One that worked across cultures. One that left people feeling understood, not labeled. One that didn’t just describe people—it helped them work together and thrive.
In June 1984, PREP was published. PREP Profile Systems, Inc. was established in Bend, Oregon.
“This has been a 40-plus year study. This is the why of PREP. I didn’t create it for a personality assessment—there were plenty of those back then, and there are still plenty today. The real reason I developed this was because I discovered a key factor in onboarding solutions where people were failing.”
— JoAn Mann, Founder
40 Years of Research
PREP Launches
JoAn Mann (MBA-GPHR) and Dr. Samuel Robert Houston publish the PREP Profile. PREP Profile Systems, Inc. is established.
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June 16, 1984
Global Adoption
PREP is used by hundreds of organizations across the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Major re-norming studies in 1992–94 and 2007–11. Translations into 14 languages.
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1984-2019
A New Chapter
After a brief change in ownership, JoAn repurchased PREP in January 2021 and established PREP Advanced Insights, Inc. — returning the company to its research-driven roots.
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2019-2021
Built for What's Next
PREP’s new platform launches — the 10th iteration since 1987. For the first time, the Change Readiness and Personal Resilience metrics JoAn developed are available to every user, not just research partners.
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2022-Present
40+
Years of research
5 min
Time to Complete
5,000+
Client Firms Worldwide
410,000+
People Assessed
What Makes PREP Different
Built for Real People
Most assessments from the 1940s (DISC, Myers-Briggs) were developed on a narrow population—primarily white males at elite universities. PREP was intentionally designed with cross-cultural norming from the start. 8th-grade reading level vocabulary. Valid and non-biased across religion, ethnicity, culture, gender, and age. Compliant with EEOC and Affirmative Action requirements.
More Than Personality
PREP doesn’t just tell you what someone is like. It tells you how they’re doing right now—their Energy Reserve, Stress Level, and Change Readiness. That’s information competitors simply cannot provide at any price.
One Assessment, Many Applications
Take the assessment once. Generate dozens of different reports—from team coaching guides to career fit analyses to pair-match comparisons. No need to re-assess for different purposes.
Research-Grade, Accessible Speed
Five minutes. That’s all it takes. And research shows that shorter assessments actually produce better data—longer, complex surveys lead to fatigue, question-skipping, and random clicking.