Emmanuel Serriere - L'Arche and Jean Vanier

L'Arche and Jean Vanier

Serrière has been instrumental his entire forty five year career in helping adults with developmental disabilities in California to have a more normalized life according to their choices in their own community. One of his first important contacts was with Jean Vanier in Trosly Breuil where he was employed from February to July 1965 to help create l'Arche in that small village North of Paris. Serrière immigrated to the United States from France in 1968 and became a US citizen in 1974 and got married in June 1976 in Saratoga, California. He obtained a Masters in Rehabilitation Administration from the University of San Francisco and subsequently became Executive Director of various California non-profit agencies in Northern California most of them dealing with adults with developmental disabilities. He based his entire career on the philosophy broadly borrowed from his mentor Jean Vanier: providing people-centered services, empowering them to achieve their full potential and beyond, maximizing their quality of life according to their choices. In 1997, Serrière was appointed Calaveras County Mental Health Administrator where he worked for seven years. He belongs, thru his mother, to the same old french family that Jean-Pierre Desthuilliers..