The program

• 

  Amy Dallas

  Program Manager, Reshaping Prosecution

  Vera Institute of Justice

  A former Brooklyn public defender who helps prosecutors and community organizations develop responses to conflict and harm that are more restorative, equitable, and responsive to community needs.

• 

  Jonathan Scharrer

  Clinical Professor & Director, Restorative Justice Project

  Frank J. Remington Center, University of Wisconsin Law School

  An experienced facilitator and trainer in victim-offender dialogues, including cases involving serious and violent harm, with deep experience in the preparation, care, and accountability these processes require.

• 

  Kellsie Sayers, Esq., LMSW

  Senior Director, Restorative Practices

  Center for Justice Innovation

  A lawyer, licensed social worker, and former public defender who oversees restorative-practice initiatives across demonstration projects, joining legal-system experience with a practice-centered view of implementation.

• 

  Thalia González

  Professor of Law & James Edgar Hervey ’50 Chair of Litigation

  UC Law San Francisco

  Faculty Co-Director of the Center for Racial and Economic Justice and a leading scholar on restorative justice, institutional power, inequality, and legal reform.

• JD Photo forthcoming

  Julya Denholm DeMaria

  Program Coordinator

  Community Connections, Tallahassee

  She coordinates community-based programming focused on connection, youth development, and restorative approaches, bringing an implementation perspective grounded in relationship-building and program sustainability.

• 

  Janelle Edens

  Executive Director

  Connection First

  A restorative-practices leader with experience in schools, juvenile justice, and statewide child-welfare systems, whose work shows the relevance of restorative approaches across institutions, families, and communities.

• 

  Julie and Michael McBride

  Family Members Directly Impacted by Serious Harm

  Lived Experience

  They bring lived experience as family members affected by serious harm and a restorative process, grounding the conference in personal questions of accountability, healing, punishment, and repair.

• 

  Lynn Branham

  Visiting Professor of Law

  Florida State University College of Law

  A scholar of restorative justice, sentencing, and correctional policy whose recent work examines victim-survivors’ access to restorative-justice processes. She has held leadership roles in the ABA Criminal Justice Section.

• 

  Kevin Scott

  Director of Guaranteed Income

  Community Spring

  A longtime Gainesville organizer who leads Just Income, a guaranteed-income program created by and for formerly incarcerated people that has served more than 150 participants and distributed more than $1 million.

• 

  Max Tipping, Esq.

  Policy Director & Co-Founder

  Community Spring

  A public-interest attorney and social entrepreneur who works alongside formerly incarcerated people on fines and fees, employment barriers, housing access, strategic planning, and evaluation.

• 

  Gretchen Casey

  Restorative Justice Facilitator and Trainer

  Gainesville, Florida

  For more than three decades she has supported people affected by harm and expanded restorative approaches in Florida, with a focus on preparation, safety, accountability, and the needs of those most directly affected.

• 

  Travis Claybrooks

  Founder & Chief Executive Officer

  Raphah Institute, Nashville

  He leads Raphah’s Accountability and Repair Conferencing program, a nationally recognized alternative to prosecution in cases involving serious personal harm. A North Nashville native, U.S. Army veteran and former police officer, he also directs an early-childhood initiative for caregivers in public housing.

• 

  Aaron Williamson

  Attorney

  Private Practice

  He came to restorative justice through civil litigation and criminal defense, where he saw how conventional responses to harm fail both the people harmed and the goal of real accountability. He now brings restorative practices into his own practice, counseling nonprofits and technology communities on resolving conflict and repairing harm.

• QH Photo forthcoming

  Quaila Hugh, MPH

  Senior Program Manager, Restorative Practices

  Center for Justice Innovation

  She leads the Center’s restorative justice technical assistance, helping school systems and criminal legal agencies build the structures restorative processes need. She continues to facilitate directly, including accountability circles for young people facing gun charges.

• DJ Photo forthcoming

  Dazz Grady Johnson

  Restorative Justice Practitioner & Clinical Social Worker

  Connection First

  A clinical social worker who has spent the past three years facilitating restorative practices at Connection First. Trained in Nonviolent Communication, she brings a social work lens to the work, grounded in empathy, connection, and the belief that healing happens through dialogue.

• RR Photo forthcoming

  Rodney Rankins, Th.M.

  Reentry Specialist & Restorative Justice Circle Keeper

  Redemption 100 · HEstoration

  Considered one of the founding fathers of reentry work in the Florida Panhandle, he was instrumental in bringing restorative justice circles into reentry dorms. He is the author of 28 Pitfalls of a Man, available on tablets in more than 900 correctional institutions, and speaks from knowing reentry from both sides of the gate.

• TR Photo forthcoming

  Tolliny Rankins, Th.D.

  Reentry Specialist & Restorative Justice Practitioner

  SHEstoration · Redemption 100

  Her work takes her into prisons, reentry spaces, classrooms and communities, alongside people coming home and the families doing the time with them. She is the author of One Circle at a Time: A Restorative Justice Companion Guide and has served with statewide and national reentry and prison-reform organizations.

Participation, titles, and session assignments remain subject to final confirmation.