Ram Bhagat, PhD, serves as manager of school climate and culture strategy for Richmond Public Schools. His primary role is to envision, design, and connect trauma informed practices and restorative practices to schools and communities throughout the district.
Bhagat’s approach to trauma-sensitive restorative practices, called Massive Resilience, is rooted in the science of yoga and de-colonized mindfulness practices. He is an adjunct faculty member at Eastern Mennonite University’s Graduate Teacher Education program and certified trainer of Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.
Bhagat is involved in healing the effects of racial trauma within communities of color, as a leader of Emotional Emancipation Circles in Virginia. He was an inaugural member of the International Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) training for trainers in Burundi, East Africa, held in August 2011, which facilitates healing trauma caused by violence, war, and genocide.
Bhagat is an international trainer for the Richmond Peace Education Center (RPEC), the visionary behind the Richmond Youth Peace Project (RYPP), and a master facilitator for The Conciliation Project (TCP). In the early 1990s, he cofounded Drums No Guns (DNG) world percussion ensemble to engage youth in “healing community with rhythm.” He is an award-winning science teacher who created a series of original curriculum units for Yale University, through the National Initiative to Strengthen Public School Teaching.
Bhagat received his doctorate in Educational Leadership from VCU, where he specialized in a regional approach to school diversity. His post-doctoral work is in the areas of restorative justice in education, He is also a certified Integral Yoga teacher and Kripalu Yoga in Schools leader.