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Bob Sawers
Executive Director

Bob and Karen and their children, they have six, have been living and working in healing farm therapeutic community settings for the vast majority of their time together as a family.  This work has truly become for them a way of life.  Bob started at Gould Farm in Massachusetts in early 1990, and six years later moved to Hopewell in Ohio, where he accepted the position of clinical director.  He later became Hopewell’s executive director, a role he was in for over seven years until joining CooperRiis.

On September 1^st, 2007 Bob assumed the role of executive director at CooperRiis where he and Karen are residing with four of their children, with the other two away at college.  In Bob’s own words:  We feel honored and humbled to have been invited to join CooperRiis and asked to serve with such a dedicated staff and Board of Directors who are fully invested in the recovery of the vulnerable individuals who come to CooperRiis as residents.

The Sawers family is truly amazing and a wonderful addition and role model to staff and residents alike at CooperRiis.  Karen, an elementary school teacher, has for the most part, home schooled all their children, but the older two living here are very excited about attending Polk County Schools’ full time this year.  According to them: It is time!

Bob earned his Masters Degree in Social Work at Springfield (MA) College in Adult Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.