Speaker Profiles

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2011 Olmos Lecturers

Cheryl Graves
Director
Community Justice for Youth Institute

Cheryl Graves is a former clinical law professor at the Northwestern University School of Law Children and Family Justice Center, Cheryl has more than ten years of experience implementing restorative justice practices and providing training and support to communities, schools and juvenile justice providers. In 2005, Cheryl was awarded a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship to establish restorative justice practices in communities of color. She has traveled throughout the United States, Africa and Brazil to share restorative justice models with nongovernmental organizations, juvenile justice professionals, and political leaders interested in implementing community-based juvenile justice alternatives.

Rev. David Anderson Hooker
Attorney, Mediator, and Associate Professor of Conflict Studies Center
Justice and Peace Building, Eastern Mennonite University

David Anderson Hooker is an Associate Professor of conflict studies at Eastern Mennonite University. He also serves Senior Fellow for Community Engagement Strategies at the University of Georgia’s Fanning Institute for Public Service and Outreach. For more than 30 years Hooker has been a mediator, facilitator, and community organizer. He has worked throughout the United States, focusing on issues of environmental justice, post riot racial reconciliation, community development, democratization, and multiparty conflict resolution.   Hooker has also worked in Bosnia/Croatia, Cuba, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, Southern Sudan, and Zimbabwe. He holds a law degree (JD) from Emory University’s School of Law, a Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) from the Candler School of Theology, Masters of Public Health (MPH) and public Administration (MPA) from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, a Masters of Minority Mental Health from Washington University in St. Louis, and a BS from Morehouse College


Rita Alfred
Co-Founder
Restorative Justice Training Institute; Restorative Justice and Crisis Response Consultant

Rita consults with schools and trains district personnel, students and parents in the OaklandUnified School District in Restorative Justice. She is also a Crisis Responder in the event ofemergencies and homicides. She has served as Restorative Justice Coordinator for Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) at Cole Middle School in the Oakland Unified School District. The pilot program at Cole was so effective in significantly transforming the school culture to one that was morecaring, and centered on relationships. This culture change was instrumental in the dramaticdecrease in the referrals to expulsions, suspensions, and violence on campus, that the staffs atapproximately 20 additional schools within the District became interested and now are atdifferent stages in bringing restorative practices to their sites. Presently she is lead trainer at the Castlemont campus of 4 schools which is a ‘Building Healthy Communities’ site, an initiative funded through The California Endowment. In the last 3 years, Rita and others have trained about 1000 certificated, classified and support staff at these additional schools, and is now moving into the implementation phase. Rita completed her B.A. in Psychology in 1990 from California State University, Hayward. She has completed the coursework required to attain a Ph.D. in Psychology from the Institute of Imaginal Studies in Petaluma , CA .While attending school, she also raised two sons as a single parent.

Sujatha Baliga, Esq.
Senior Program Specialist
National Council on Crime and Delinquency

Sujatha Baliga’s legal career is characterized by an equal dedication to victims and persons accused of crime.  A former victims’ advocate and public defender, she has taught restorative justice at both the college and law school levels, offers lectures and trainings in a number of restorative practices, and has served as a consultant to the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.  In 2008, Sujatha was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship which she used to implement a restorative justice diversion program in which young people accused of crime, their families, victims, and communities collectively resolve conflicts and root out the causes of youthful offending.  Sujatha earned her A.B. from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and has held two federal clerkships.  Her personal and research interests include victims’ voices in restorative processes, the forgiveness of seemingly unforgivable acts, restorative diversion’s impact on disproportionate minority contact, and Tibetan notions of justice.

Benjamin Cairns
Restorative Justice Coordinator, North High School (Denver, CO)

Angela F. Chan
Staff Attorney
Criminal Justice Reform Program

Angela F. Chan is a staff attorney managing the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the Asian Law Caucus.  She represents immigrant families who have youth caught in the juvenile justice system and youth who are harassed or discriminated in the K-12 public education system based on race, ethnicity and other protected categories.  Angela also provides know your rights education on youth rights with the police, the juvenile justice system, and bullying and harassment.  Her work at ALC began in 2006 with a Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society Institute and an Irving Kaufman Fellowship from Harvard Law School.  She was awarded a Monarch Award by the Pacific Asian American Women Bay Area Coalition in 2008 for her work assisting immigrant families in the juvenile system.  She also was named a Local Hero by the San Francisco Bay Guardian for her advocacy on behalf of immigrant youth. She also is currently on the San Francisco Police Commission, which is a civilian oversight body that sets policy for the department and makes decisions on police disciplinary cases. She earned a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Occidental College.

Demetrius Daniel
TRUST Paroled Fellow
San Quentin

The TRUST Fellows are a group of twenty to twenty-five men who have undergone intensive training in anger management, self evaluation, financial literacy, time management, and substance abuse counseling. As mentors or citizens returning to their communities, the TRUST Fellows live by their acronym: Teaching Responsibility Utilizing Sociological Training. The TRUST promotes fund raisers, health fairs, cultural events, self-help education classes, and re-entry management. Demetrius joined TRUST “first to give back from my lifestyle. Second to participate with men who have changed their lives. Third to learn the whole organization.” Being a TRUST Fellow means “Integrity and responsibility to this organization and a commitment to [him]self and to the population.” He entered prison at age 22. Now 42, he “[takes] full responsibility for my action.” He says, “Internally, it is more about self-growth. I am proud of who I am. Today, I have matured into a decent person. I truly understand what life is. I want to be a responsible citizen inside and out.” Eventually, he wants to have his own business, promote the TRUST from the outside, help men inside and outside of prison, and help curb violence. He would also like to travel the world, fish, dirt bike, and attend an NBA or NFL or baseball game. Most importantly, he wants to let let the community know that he has changed and “you can change if you are willing to humble yourself.” His personal message to the outside community is as follows: “Never give up on us. You can change. We can change. We have. Education is the key to social and economic injustice. Please tell every kid, or teenage, listen to your parents, plus be your own leader. Know right from wrong. Any problems you have get help. Don’t be scared to ask. You are the future.”

Fania E. Davis
J.D., Ph.D., Co-Founder and Executive Director
Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY)

Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama, during the social ferment of the civil rights era, the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday School bombing crystallized within Fania a passionate commitment to social transformation. For the next decades, she was active in the civil rights, Black liberation, women’s, prisoners’, peace, anti-racial violence and anti-apartheid movements. After receiving her law degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1979, Fania practiced almost 27 years as a civil rights trial lawyer. During the mid 1990’s, she entered a Ph.D. program in indigenous studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and apprenticed with traditional healers around the globe, particularly in Africa. Since receiving her Ph.D. in 2003, Fania has been engaged in a search for healing alternatives to adversarial justice. She has taught Restorative Justice at San Francisco ‘s New College Law School and Indigenous Peacemaking at Eastern Mennonite University ‘s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. The search for a healing justice led Fania to bring restorative justice to Oakland . The founder and current Director of RJOY, Fania also serves as counsel to the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. Fania’s research interests include exploring the indigenous roots, particularly the African indigenous roots, of restorative justice. Fania is also a mother of two children, a dancer, and practitioner of yoga and chi gung.

Rose Elizondo
Mediator
San Francisco Victim Offender Reconciliation Program

Rose Elizondo cultivates empowerment and community in all she does. Rose is a circle keeper, facilitator, and trainer with the San Quentin Interfaith Restorative Justice Roundtable, which partners with Boalt. She also shares her contemplative practice with the Centering Prayer group inside San Quentin. As an environmentalist, Rose promotes healthy and safe communities through dance and Green Jobs for those who have been previously incarcerated and/or harmed by violence. She has conducted workshops in Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, Illinois, and New Mexico, as well as in California, on structural racism and its harms.

Mary Louise Frampton
Faculty Director
Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice

Mary Louise Frampton is the Faculty Director of the Henderson Center for Social Justice where she teaches in the areas of law and social justice, restorative justice, critical race theory, and legislative advocacy. She recently launched a community engaged research project on the impact of the Greensboro, North Carolina Truth and Reconciliation Commission on racial healing in that city. Some years ago she initiated the Communities in Justice partnership with the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and the Oakland Tribune to foster the discussion of restorative justice in the media. Her most relevant publication on restorative justice and race is “Transformative Justice and the Dismantling of Slavery’s Legacy in Post-Modern America,” in After the War on Crime: Race, Democracy, and a New Reconstruction (NYU Press, 2008). She has presented on restorative justice and race at national conferences on restorative justice and law and society. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Frampton was a civil rights lawyer for thirty years.

George Galvis
Technical Assistant Specialist
Tribal Youth Program

Since 1993, George Galvis has been a dedicated community worker promoting a set of non-violent values and strategies to end violence, restore community, and reclaim youth from the madness plaguing our streets.  George is an educator, activist, writer, consultant, trainer, and speaker in the areas of youth development & organizing, violence prevention, restorative justice for youth, male responsibility, fatherhood issues, cultural competency, multiracial alliance building, Urban Native American community issues, social justice, participatory action research, and community organizing, planning, & development. As a community development planner and organizer he is interested in social action research models that draw on the inherent wisdom and vision of community residents to facilitate community led planning, policy, and organizing processes. He is also interested in holistic approaches to community development that go beyond “bricks and mortar”, and encompass the human, cultural and spiritual assets of community residents as a vehicle for transformative social change. He holds both a Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies and a Master’s in City Planning and Community Development from UC Berkeley.  He is the proud father of two daughters named Mikaela and Ayacaxtli.

Delia Ginorio
Survivor Restoration Program Director
Organization: San Francisco Sheriff’s Department Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP)

Delia Ginorio is the Survivor Restoration Program Director for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP), a restorative justice program that focuses on offender accountability, survivor restoration, and community involvement to reduce recidivism, responsibly return ex-offenders to their communities, and prevent further violence. Delia manages a team of survivor staff who reach out to the women, children, and men who have been silenced by violence in their lives, providing them with the support, resources, and protection necessary for leading healthy lives. She is dedicated to the empowerment and education of the disenfranchised. She also provides training seminars and workshops to community groups and agencies, both locally and nationally, on violence prevention that focus on intimate partner violence and is committed to providing outreach and education to community agencies on the restorative justice principles. As a survivor of violence, Delia understands the importance of providing services to all those affected by crime. Delia is currently the President of the Board of Directors for Five Keys Charter School. 

Rekia Jirbin
Graduate Student Researcher, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley

Hon. Raymond Dean Jones (ret.)
Of Counsel 
The Holt Group LLC

The Honorable Mr. Jones served as Law Clerk to Chief Justice Edward E. Pringle of the Colorado Supreme Court before engaging in the practice of corporate and commercial transactions and litigation. He left the private practice to become Chief Counsel and Deputy District Attorney to the Metropolitan District Attorneys’ Consumer Office, where he counseled both business entities and consumers, and prosecuted consumer fraud. Thereafter, he distinguished himself as a Trial Judge for two years on the Denver County Court, nine years on the Denver District Court, and as Chief Judge of the Aurora Municipal Court for two years. He does pro-bono work with non-profit organizations, in the community, and with various churches. He served over 15 years as an Associate Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals writing approximately 1500 Opinions. While Counsel to The Holt Group LLC, Mr. Jones also served as an Assistant Professor in the Business School of Metropolitan State College, and served as corporate counsel to a small insurance corporation. Mr. Jones continues to serve clients in corporate and commercial transactions and litigation, and provides ADR services as an Arbitrator and Mediator. He received his law degree from Harvard University in 1971 and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado College in 1967. His hobbies include reading, baseball, hiking, golf, choral singing, and art and drama.

Karen Lynn Morton
Co-Chair Emeritus
Power-Pac

After serving five years as Co-Chair of the citywide parent organization POWER-PAC (Parents Organized to Win Educate and Renew Policy Action Council), Lynn has been granted the position of Co-Chair Emeritus. The peace center program, which is run entirely by volunteers, serves about 12 to 15 students at a time, who are referred by school administrators, teachers or parents (although some come of their own accord). Students come for about two hours once a week for 6 to 10 weeks. Boys come on one day, and girls on another. The center has trained and supported more than 3,000 low-income parents, mostly women of color, to be powerful leaders. Together, they are taking action to make their communities better for all families. The goal is to give children the opportunity “to feel safe and talk about what’s going on in school, what’s going on in the home, and getting them to see how each one of their behaviors [affects] their community, their school, their classroom,” Morton says. Its mission is to strengthen the power and voice of low-income and working families at all levels of civic life -from local institutions and communities to the city and state policy arenas. Lynn is the proud mother of one son.  She is an avid reader and loves to write music and poetry.

Marco Nuñez
Director of Organizing
Padres & Jovenes Unidos

Sonya Shah
Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco
Facilitator, Victim Offender Education Group at San Quentin  

Sonya Shah is an activist and writer: she is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, a facilitator in the Victim Offender Education Group at San Quentin, and a senior leadership facilitator at the National Association of Media Arts and Culture. As a teacher she is most interested in developing learning communities as a practice of liberation. Her broader social interests lie in restorative justice, the study of violence and nonviolent social movements and critical pedagogy.

Olis Simmons
Executive Director
Youth UpRising

Olis Simmons is executive director of Youth UpRising, an east Oakland youth center offering a wide range of programs and services that develop leadership and combat racial tensions and violence among Oakland youth. Simmons has nearly 20 years of public and private sector experience in youth leadership development, child welfare, health care and economic development. She guided the development of Youth UpRising, a state-of-the-art 25,000-sq.-ft. center. Previously, she served as director of children and youth services for the Alameda County Health Care Service Agency, where she led numerous projects of national significance, including school-based health centers and Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA. Her national public policy and administration experience includes work for Manpower Demonstration Resear Corp., where she provided technical assistance to various states and localities struggling with welfare reform.

Robert Spicer
Culture and Climate Coordinator
Christian Fenger High School

Robert Spicer is the Culture and Climate Coordinator at Christian Fenger High School. He is passionate about working with youth and looks forward to continuing his work with “peace circles” with students at Fenger High School to create a safe school community. He is also the Senior Pastor of Englewood Mennonite Church where he has served since 2003. Spicer, a long-time teacher in Chicago schools and former staffer at the Chicago Justice for Youth Institute for six years, is trained — and a passionate believer — in an array of practices and a philosophy of restorative justice. He received his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College and my Masters in Education from Dominician University. He is the father of 4 children.

Wilda L. White ’83
Executive Director
Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice

Wilda L. White ‘83 joined the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice in December, 2008, as the Center’s Executive Director.  She began her career as a Staff Attorney at The Legal Aid Society in the South Bronx and was managing attorney at Sterns & Walker, handling insurance bad faith, civil rights, and personal injury cases. She was an Assistant City Editor of The Miami Herald during the time that the newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and an international management consultant with McKinsey & Company, where she specialized in strategic planning. Most recently, White was a partner with Walker, Hamilton & White, where she handled personal injury, wrongful death, civil rights, employment, and disability discrimination cases.

Patricia Zamora
Oakland Counseling Coordinator/Organizer
Causa Justa Just Cause  

Patricia was born in Nicaragua and raised in San Francisco’s Excelsior District. She has extensive experience working with Spanish- and English-speaking youth and families through community-based organizations in the Mission District. She has worked as a peer leader, tutor, outreach worker, program coordinator, and also co-founded a queer Latina youth support group, Aquellas L.O.C.A.S. She received her college education at San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies Raza Studies Department. In the little spare time she has she would love to DJ more.