Advisory Board Members
Please note that this page is still under construction as we are finalizing agreements with our other professional advisors.
Roger Sarrow: is a certified trainer for The Center for Nonviolent Communication since 2001 and he brings an abundance of knowledge and skills from education, training and experience combined with enthusiasm and compassion. His leadership experience includes: Director of Treatment for the Drug Rehabilitation Program for the Thirteenth Naval District of the United States Navy, Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor for the State of California, Consultant to Western Washington University's Multi Ethnic Cross Cultural Awareness training of staff for the Dept of Social Health Services for the State of Washington, and District Executive for the Boy Scouts of America where he taught consensus and community building leadership skills. He has organized and co-lead International Intensive Trainings with Dr Marshall Rosenberg and delights in the depth of community that is created at these events. He has worked for years in a men's residential recovery program. Current projects include working with inmates at the Santa Barbara County Jail, training parents and teachers at several schools as well as a group of home schoolers. Rodger initiated the Compassionate Leadership program that is now drawing people from all over the planet. You can learn about it at www.CompassionateLeadershipTraining.com. His style combines presence, humor, laughter and play with learning. He shares his love of the outdoors through a Santa Barbara City College Continuing Education class, 'Nature, Hiking and Self-Healing', a true adventure in self-discovery.
Ruth Beaglehole, M.A. Founder of the Center for NonViolent Education and Parenting, Ruth Beaglehole has spent her life considering the needs of children, seeking support and nurturing for children as full human beings, using the principles of respect, healing and connection. Ruth’s professional journey parallels her personal journey and has given her the empathy, courage and dedication that has fueled her groundbreaking work; creating a new paradigm of unconditional parenting that is the soul of CNVEP.
Ruth’s story begins in New Zealand; born to Academic parents, with one sister and two brothers. Ruth’s childhood was “complicated”, to use her own words. Her own struggle would become Ruth’s biggest asset. As she set off to heal her own emotional pains, her understanding of the parent/child relationship was transformed. She began to see the world in broad, loving, and ultimately profound terms. Her early interest in childhood education earned Ruth a B.A. in Education from Victoria University, New Zealand and a Diploma in Preschool Teaching (known in New Zealand as Kindergarten teaching).
Ruth moved to Los Angeles and was immediately drawn to the community of Echo Park where she became involved in relevant issues of the day. This community energy evolved into the Echo Park Silverlake Child care Center, known fondly as the Playgroup. In its day, the Playgroup was a much needed, newly formed concept. A daycare center that serviced the working population of the community, it had humble beginnings in garages. After much work, it evolved into a city-funded program with it’s own building, credited for amending city laws to allow child care in residential neighborhoods for the first time ever, simplifying life as we know it today.
After leaving Playgroup, Ruth became a Parent Education Teacher for Los Angeles Unified School District. Working with children, and then parents, awakened fresh ideas in her vast heart. She saw that parents needed nurturing and support and wanted information about child development and how to love their children. But there was a big gap for many parents; they simply did not know what to do.
Seeking to broaden her skills as a Parent Educator, Ruth earned her M.A. in Marriage, Family and Child Therapy from Phillips Institute, Los Angeles. With her newfound degree, Ruth’s work with Los Angeles Unified School District expanded with the birth of the model program she founded; the Teen Parenting and Child care Program at the Los Angeles Technology Center. This program enabled teen mothers to earn their High School diploma while their children were enrolled in Ruth’s child care program. It was this child care program that birthed the term nonviolent parenting. It was a simple genesis; while watching the teens scream and spank their children, she realized that their own early childhoods had brought these teens to a covertly violent style of parenting. Ruth made a commitment to create a bottom line within the walls of that child care center. “We would love, support and model nurturing to these children”, recalls Ruth.
Center for Nonviolent Education and Parenting – 1999
Taken by the success of the program, Ruth was encouraged by the teen mother mentors and the community to extend the philosophy and practice, evolving into CNVEP. Ruth’s big heart, her deep feelings for children, adults and humanity at large have made CNVEP the thriving organization that it is today.
Ruth resides in Echo Park, rooted deeply in the community that has held her for almost forty years. Her three devoted children and five Grandchildren that connect her heart to her work, live nearby and support; often attending her parenting classes. Ruth remarks that as she watches them parent she knows that her philosophy works, seeing them love with more freedom and emotional competency than she started with. She has broken the cycle in her own family and that is very profound.