Restorative Justice Scholar-Practitioner

M.A. Candidate, Restorative Justice | Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University

Graduate Assistant | Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice · Fall 2026

I am a restorative justice scholar-practitioner with nearly twenty years of experience across community-based practice, program leadership, facilitation, education, media, and grassroots field-building. I am currently completing my Master’s in Restorative Justice at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, bringing long-standing practice and inquiry into deeper scholarly conversation, research, and publication.

My approach is relational, trauma-responsive, holistic, and grounded in presence and coherence. I am particularly interested in what lies beneath formal process: nervous-system regulation, power and difference, relational dynamics, unseen harms, culture, consciousness, and the conditions that allow meaningful accountability, repair, and transformation to emerge.

My formation crosses restorative justice and peacebuilding scholarship, lived experience, long-term mentorship, contemplative practice, and Indigenous and earth-grounded teachings. I approach restorative justice not simply as a method for responding to harm, but as a lifelong relational practice—an ongoing apprenticeship in how we listen, live, repair, and belong to one another.

Field-Building, Education & Restorative Justice on The Rise

In 2011, I founded Restorative Justice on The Rise (RJOTR), the first podcast devoted specifically to restorative justice. What began as a grassroots media project grew into a wider educational platform connecting practitioners, scholars, students, and communities with restorative justice dialogue, training, and field-based knowledge.

Over the years, RJOTR has offered learning in Restorative Justice Foundations and RJ 101, Community Conferencing I & II, Trauma-Responsive Restorative Justice, Presence and Restorative Justice, Coherence and Self-Care, and other areas of restorative practice. I have taught, convened, and/or collaborated alongside guest faculty and practitioners including Kay Pranis, Fania Davis, Howard Zehr, Dominic Barter, Mark Umbreit, Eric Butler, Ted Lewis, Elaine Lyubansky, Andrea Brenneke, Tanya Odoms, Kris Miner, Jessica Dancingheart, Deborah Heifetz, James O'Dea, Belvie Rooks, and Edward C. Valandra, among others.

Through hundreds of long-form interviews and public dialogues, I have also had the privilege of bringing the perspectives of practitioners, scholars, movement leaders, culture-bearers, and community voices into an accessible public archive. Guests have included Michelle Alexander, Bryan Stevenson, Sebastian Junger, Arun Gandhi, A.T. Ariyaratne, Johan Galtung, Fania Davis, Judges Andrew Becroft and Heemi Tamani, Naida Glavish, Libby Hoffman/Fambul Tok, Sequoyah Trueblood, Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining), Grandmother Mona Polacca, Anita Wadhwa, Teiahsha Bankhead, Sandra Pavelka, DeMointé Wesley, and many others.

This body of work has profoundly shaped my scholarship. I understand knowledge in restorative justice as something generated not only through academic research, but through practice, relationship, dialogue, lived experience, community wisdom, and sustained encounter with the field.

Current Scholarship

My graduate research now brings these years of practice, dialogue, and inquiry into focused scholarly development. Current areas include trauma-responsive restorative justice; power and difference in community conferencing; restorative workplace transformation; parental incarceration and intergenerational harm; presence and the relational field in facilitation; and restorative and transformational leadership.

For a complete listing of Emerging Frameworks, Papers, and Publications/Essays, please see the dedicated pages within this site.

Tallinn, Estonia EFRJ Poster Presentation

Molly at far right with colleagues in front of my collaborative poster presentation (Developed with support from Patricia LaTaille) on Therapy Dogs in Restorative Justice To Increase Trauma-Informed Practice. A Poster demonstrating Program and Case Study Analysis.

Origin Story

I am a scholar, writer and grassroots practitioner with a holistic approach

My Mom at PWCC - Idaho

Incarcerated as #48985 following a crime committed during severe mental illness; her story became the subject of extensive news coverage.

The Mom I Know

With my brother and me, c. 1973 — a life and relationship that cannot be contained by a prison number or a crime.

Urgently compelled to do something positive by the long-term incarceration of my mother, I dove into the study and practice of social healing in the early 2000s, working closely with former Amnesty International Washington Director James O'Dea and beginning a long period of study with Indigenous worldviews, contemplative traditions, and Earth-based practices.

My mother spent fifteen years incarcerated, including time in solitary confinement. Living alongside the impacts of incarceration—on a person, a family, and the relationships and communities surrounding them—became part of the ground from which my later work in restorative justice emerged.

I facilitated my first restorative justice process in 2011, in response to a violent crime in our small Colorado community. I later became Executive Director of a nearby community-based restorative justice program, working with courts, schools, law enforcement, youth, adults, families, and community members across a diverse caseload.

Along the way, I founded Restorative Justice on The Rise, which grew from the first podcast devoted to restorative justice into a grassroots education and dialogue platform. Through that work, I have had the extraordinary privilege of learning with, interviewing, presenting alongside, and guest lecturing with people and communities around the world.

Nearly twenty years into this larger journey of social healing—and fifteen years into restorative justice specifically—I continue to approach the work with a beginner's mind. I don't believe this is work we ever finish learning.

At the heart of my practice is a simple conviction: what happens at the micro level matters at the macro level. How we meet one another, how we attend to harm, how we work with trauma and difference, and how we cultivate presence and coherence in relationship can ripple outward into families, organizations, communities, and systems.

The Joy of Storytelling & Interviewing

Storytelling has been central to my work for more than fifteen years. Through writing and podcasts, public interviews, panels, and facilitated dialogues, I have sought to create space for people to share lived experience, practice wisdom, and perspectives that deepen our understanding of justice, relationship, and repair.

Influential Mentor: Dominic Barter

Dominic Barter and me at the NACRJ Conference, 2015. His work with Restorative Circles (Círculos Restaurativos), and particularly his apprenticeship-based approach to learning and practice, has deeply influenced my development as a restorative justice practitioner.

Students and professors gather at the close of Power, Difference and Restorative Justice—a phenomenal course and learning experience during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, June 2026.

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