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Director of the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership/Center for Parent Leadership, Bev joined the Prichard Committee in 1991. She is responsible for the Prichard Committee’s community and parent engagement initiatives. She came to the Prichard Committee after a career at IBM that included management, management training, employee development (training), plans and controls, and library administration in the development laboratory.
After the passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act in 1990, Bev created and managed a network of professional staff to organize over 60 Community Committees for Education, in over 90 Kentucky school districts, to support education reform. She developed a dialogue process, Parents and Teachers Talking Together, which reached over 12,000 participants since 1994. This process is incorporated in the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership that she created in 1997. Today she continues to direct the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership, an increasingly credible process by which parents receive skills and information, recognition, and motivation to work within their schools or districts to engage more parents in work that improves student achievement. Over 1,300 parents have received training.
Because it is opening schools to all, CIPL received the NCCJ of the Bluegrass Humanitarian Award in 2000, and Bev received the Governor Martha Layne Collins Leadership Award 2000. In 2002, CIPL received the Vision Award from the Kentucky Association of School Councils. The Southern Growth Policies Board designated it a 2003 Southern Innovator in Leadership Development and Civic Engagement program. In 2004 Bev received the YMCA of Central KY National Family Week Advocacy Award because of the institute.
In April, 2002 Bev founded the Center for Parent Leadership (CPL). As a mission-based consulting unit of the Prichard Committee, CPL works to improve student achievement by engaging parents to become decision-making partners in public schools through providing consulting, technical support, workshops, seminars, and curriculum outside Kentucky.
Articles about Bev’s work with parents and communities in support of improved education include:
- “The Power of Parent Partnership,” by Anne T. Henderson, Karen Jones, Beverly Raimondo. Our Children: The National PTA Magazine, April, 1999
- “Unlocking Parent Potential,” by Anne T. Henderson and Beverly N. Raimondo. Principal Leadership, September, 2001.
- “The Case for Parent Leadership,” by Anne Henderson, Bev Raimondo, Adam Kernan-Schloss, and Bonnie Jacob, available online at www.centerforparentleadership.org, January, 2004.
Bev is a native of Lexington, KY and graduate of the University of Kentucky with a BS degree in Education and a MS in Library Science. She is a member of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform. Civic volunteer involvement includes her church and board membership in such organizations as the Salvation Army, the YWCA Spouse Abuse Center, the Kentucky Museum for Art and Design, and the Lexington Childrens’ Theatre. She and her husband, Tony, have two daughters who attended public schools.