Background

Ron serves as the Director of Operations for the USA, Director of Research, and Coach. His professional background is mostly in education and human development, with more than 20 years of experience working in secondary and higher education. For 17 years he created and led a pioneering Montessori high school program in Portland, Oregon, and was instrumental in the preliminary development of another in Ohio. Ron has also designed and taught a number of courses in education and human development at Marylhurst University, Portland State University, and the Evergreen State College. During his years with Montessori, Ron and his wife organized and led multiple trips for high school students to Mexico, integrating study tours with service projects in Mexico City and Oaxaca through Northwest Medical Teams. Two additional study tours took them and his students to the British Isles and the People’s Republic of China. Much earlier, he and his wife also spent two years in Brazil with the Peace Corps (1967-69) where they developed agricultural youth programs, coordinated the construction of a new elementary school, and Ron taught English at the local secondary school.

Education

Ron holds a Masters degree in Education from the University of Portland, a Montessori Diploma from the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), and completed all the coursework for an M.A. in Philosophy and Religion (with a concentration in Buddhist Studies) at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the late 1970s.

Languages

English (native), Spanish (conversation).

Personal Development

Ron dedicates a significant amount of time to his family, finding that to be an essential aspect of personal development. His ILP consists of contemplative reading, walking, and meditative inquiry.

Focus

A major focus of Ron’s work is the relationship between education and further human development, a relationship that is enhanced by linking teaching and developmental coaching. This focus finds expression in his current activities with Interkannections. He is a project leader for Interkannections’ Education Project, which is being designed as a three-year pilot project to foster further, or post-conventional, development in emerging adults, young people 17 to 25 years old. He is also studying developmental coaching and the assessment of post-conventional adult development in order to help bring these important technologies into Interkannections’ professional offerings.