An Attitude of Gratitude – Craig and Loren DeRoy honored as Citizens of the Year

My friend Loren DeRoy and her husband were recently honored as Palos Verdes Peninsula citizens of the year as reported in the Palos Verdes Peninsula News.

Rather than taking their bows and soaking in the spotlight, Craig and Loren DeRoy chose to applaud their friends and fellow volunteers who attended the October 21str Citizens of the Year dinner at Trump National Golf Club. Crossing the arts, education, the environment and human rights, the DeRoys €™ reach is far. Understanding that it takes a community, the couple shared the honor bestowed upon them with the organizations they either helped to create or help to sustain and, of course, the people with those organizations.

Craig and Loren DeRoy were honored as the 2011 Citizens of the Year. The DeRoys €™ contributions to the community, as well as the global community, benefit the arts, education, the environment and basic human rights. Photo courtesy of Clix Portrait Studios

€œIt €™s really all of you that we €™re here to honor tonight, € Loren said.

Sponsored by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the PVP Rotary Club, the DeRoys, longtime residents of the Peninsula, were recognized as this year €™s Citizens of the Year at the annual awards dinner.

Representatives from the Palos Verdes Art Center, PVP Land Conservancy, Peninsula High School Visual Arts Booster Club and the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, Marymount College, and the cities of Rolling Hills and Rolling Hills Estates were on hand to celebrate the couple and their local and global contributions to the enrichment of many lives.

As the current president of the Art Center €™s board of trustees, Loren €™s €œcalm, steady guidance € is helping the center through a $5-million capital campaign and a major renovation that will better serve the arts community.

€œShe took the job at a critical time in our history. I €™m not sure if she knew what she was getting into, € Art Center Executive Director Robert Yassin said to the laughter of the crowd.

Loren also co-wrote an award-winning curriculum for Art at Your Fingertips, a school-based art program that brings art into elementary school classrooms, and helped developed an arts-based therapeutic program for local hospitals.

As co-founder of the Peninsula High School Visual Arts Booster Club, Loren works to enhance fine arts education at the secondary school level.

A result of the Booster Club €™s work is the 2007 creation of Peninsula High €™s glass-blowing class, which has now brought the delicate, collaborative art form to more than 175 students.

Loren has served on local government commissions, for both Rolling Hills and Rolling Hills Estates, and is equally supportive of preserving the Peninsula €™s open space and public parks.

She was invited by PVPLC founder, Bill Ailor, to join the conservancy €™s board and asked to work on the development of the White Point Nature Preserve.

In a letter from Ailor (who is in France working on a project), he wrote, €œLoren took on the challenge and the White Point Nature Preserve is the result. €

€œShe has the ability to find a need; but her gift is to find a way to fulfill that need, € said her Visual Arts Booster Club co-founder and friend Nancy Cumming.

Craig, a businessman, entrepreneur and attorney, founded the Medeem Institute as his answer to the Clinton Global Initiative, started by former U.S. President Bill Clinton. CGI challenges the world €™s leaders to address poverty, health, education and global environmental challenges.

The DeRoys €™ Medeem Ghana Ltd. brings legal empowerment to Ghana €™s poor through an affordable and accessible approach to documenting their land rights.

The couple recently partnered with Marymount College to establish the institute at the school, expanding the college €™s opportunities for service, research and field work for students and faculty in global studies and business programs.

It was a pretty diverse collection of organizations represented at the award dinner, Craig said. The common theme, however, was community.

€œNo matter where you are on the planet, you need and seek a community, € he said. And within a community, €œLarge goals can be achieved if taken in small pieces. €