Practitioners
Adriana L. Scott
(she/her)
Adriana L. Scott (She/Her) is a Conflict Transformation Practitioner. She renders interventions for organizations and local communities through mediation, facilitation, coaching and short term discussions.
As a middle child growing up in a traditional Jamaican household, Adriana instinctively embraced the role of mediator, not only between her siblings but also her parents. Having experienced various instances of trauma while coming into her own being, Adriana has worked intently to understand and address the effects of those situations, ultimately defining and refining her sense of self to be one filled with peace, empathy, and growth. Adriana gravitates toward people, connecting beyond the surface to create a safe space rooted in the heart of who one is, and how they desire to express themselves unapologetically.
Adriana strives to be a beacon of hope in her community, and she endeavors to cultivate a culture where conflict is no longer seen as a hindrance to progress, but rather an opportunity for positive social change. She strives to empower people of color to embrace conflict, difference and the healing of trauma as a means of sustaining interpersonal relationships.
Adriana holds a Master’s degree in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Adriana integrates mediation tools to bond human connections by searching for and deepening opportunities for intersectionality, specifically through the combination of meaningful dialogue, accountability and the compassionate recognition of each party’s individual values and interests.
In her spare time, Adriana is a proud bun mom to two adorable rabbits, Charlotte and Winter. She also advocates for youth in the foster care system, empowers friendships and connections through social events including pool tournaments, dancing, hiking events, and plays a role in organizing events that inspire healthy living.
Adriana L. Scott
(she/her)
Adriana L. Scott (She/Her) is a Conflict Transformation Practitioner. She renders interventions for organizations and local communities through mediation, facilitation, coaching and short term discussions.
As a middle child growing up in a traditional Jamaican household, Adriana instinctively embraced the role of mediator, not only between her siblings but also her parents. Having experienced various instances of trauma while coming into her own being, Adriana has worked intently to understand and address the effects of those situations, ultimately defining and refining her sense of self to be one filled with peace, empathy, and growth. Adriana gravitates toward people, connecting beyond the surface to create a safe space rooted in the heart of who one is, and how they desire to express themselves unapologetically.
Adriana strives to be a beacon of hope in her community, and she endeavors to cultivate a culture where conflict is no longer seen as a hindrance to progress, but rather an opportunity for positive social change. She strives to empower people of color to embrace conflict, difference and the healing of trauma as a means of sustaining interpersonal relationships.
Adriana holds a Master’s degree in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Adriana integrates mediation tools to bond human connections by searching for and deepening opportunities for intersectionality, specifically through the combination of meaningful dialogue, accountability and the compassionate recognition of each party’s individual values and interests.
In her spare time, Adriana is a proud bun mom to two adorable rabbits, Charlotte and Winter. She also advocates for youth in the foster care system, empowers friendships and connections through social events including pool tournaments, dancing, hiking events, and plays a role in organizing events that inspire healthy living.
Andrew Greenia
(he/him)
Andrew Greenia (he/him) is a facilitator, coach, and barber striving to support change through meaningful connection and tend to our collective growth - inside and out. A bridge builder by nature and community organizer by training, Andrew brings nearly a decade of experience in social justice education and organizational change to helping leaders better understand systems of power and oppression, respond effectively to the impact of these systems on our selves and others, and cultivate more just conditions. Andrew currently coaches leaders and consults with organizations focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion at Promise54, facilitates in the Interpersonal Dynamics Facilitator Training Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and cuts hair at Dax Lee’s Barber & Apothecary in Oakland, CA.
Andrew holds a B.A. in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago and an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where he was an Equity & Inclusion Fellow. Andrew earned an Associated Certified Coach (ACC) credential from the International Coaching Federation in 2022, was selected as a Fellow in the Oakland Chapter of New Leaders Council in 2020, and was awarded the Tina Tchen Ally Award from the Harvard Black Graduation Committee in 2018. Andrew lives in the Bay Area with his partner.
Barbara Lipson
(she/her)
Senior practitioner- Organizational Effectiveness
Barbara Lipson is a senior practitioner. As a long time member of the SEEDS community, she has supported the strategic direction of the agency, supports programs and works directly with clients.
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A dynamic, results-oriented professional, Barbara is experienced in communication administration and program development within non-profit setting. She exemplifies comprehensive knowledge in all aspects of effective communication and emotional intelligence, mediation, facilitation and training, and an aptitude in fostering a positive work environment.
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She has been with SEEDS since 2009, mediating and facilitating for businesses, communities, schools, spiritual communities, and public agencies. Over the years, she has trained hundreds of participants on many topics, including conflict resolution, communication, equity and belonging, and leadership skills.
Barbara has lived in the East Bay since 1988. She is an artist (specializing in portraiture) and enjoys spending time with her family.
Bijon J. Barnes
(he/they)
Practitioner
Bijon J. Barnes is a Practitioner who provides Restorative Justice consultation, education, training and circle facilitation ranging from community building to harm, accountability and healing circles.
Bijon’s educational background includes extensive study as a communications major and Africana studies minor at San Francisco State University. They graduated from Citrus College with an associate’s degree in liberal arts for communications, as well as an associate’s degree in language arts.
His initial social justice engagement came with community and nonprofit work experience via the Youth Mentoring Action Network, a SoCal non-profit organization mentoring youth of color and others on the margins, where they soon became a mentee-turned-youth mentor and staff member. Bijon took his lived experiences as a Queer Black youth, having overcome homelessness and excelled as an AP student in high school despite adversity, and brought them to the Community Services Division of The City of Rancho Cucamonga, where he worked in various positions serving local government and community for nearly five years while completing college courses.
Barnes currently contributes both his professional and lived experience to the expansive RJ community work as an abolitionist activist/organizer; QTPOC & BIPOC Support holding circle and restorative justice trainings in schools, juvenile halls, community and more in his continued efforts bringing youth and voices on the margins to center. Bijon is honored to continue this charge at SEEDS.
Deb Brill
(she/her)
Restorative Practices Trainer
Deb Brill (she/her/hers) is currently the Executive Director of Student Services for Albany Unified School District. Prior to her current role, she was the principal of Albany Middle School for nine years, she has been the Safe and Inclusive Schools Coordinator and a sixth grade teacher for thirteen years. Her desire to impact equity in education on a systemic level is what led her to this work. In her role as principal, she initiated a schoolwide shift to embrace restorative practices. She has also directed after school and summer programs in range of different communities. Deb has also volunteered for the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program mediating conversations between youth offenders and their victims, and volunteered in crisis response for battered women's shelters. She has her mediation certification and has mediated in a range of different setting. Deb also co-founded ASC (Aware Seek Communicate) a training and consulting business that focuses on intersectional identity and communication and equity. She is excited to be part of the SEEDS team.
eveline chang
(she/they)
Restorative Practices Trainer
eveline chang, msw, (she/they) is honored to serve as a Restorative Practices Trainer with over 25 years of experience designing and facilitating community- and campus-based programs rooted in social justice, popular education, community organizing, anti-oppressive practice and community wellness. eveline’s facilitation approach integrates restorative and transformative practices, cultural humility, emergent strategy, mindfulness, belonging and collective liberation.
In addition to working with SEEDS, eveline is a full-time Lecturer with UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare, teaching graduate courses in multilevel social work practice and foundations, anti-oppressive social work, community organizing, and grief, loss and bereavement. They also serve as a facilitation consultant with the Posse Foundation, a national educational equity organization.
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Previous roles include Manager of Program Development and In-Home Support at Women’s Cancer Resource Center (Oakland/Berkeley); Director of Youth Programs at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California; hospice and palliative care in the Bay Area, and multicultural youth organizing and empowerment work with several vibrant community justice organizations in Chicago, Detroit and Houston.
eveline earned her MSW at the University of Michigan School of Social Work in interpersonal practice and community organizing, and has integrated these approaches throughout her career. Other formal training lineages include Restorative Justice Training Institute; Cultural Humility Advanced Facilitation; Transforming Trauma, Grief and Loss; Center for Mind-Body Medicine, and Qigong Teacher Certification (American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine).
Throughout their practice, eveline recognizes that true social justice must integrate healing justice and structural change, center the leadership and solutions of communities directly impacted and marginalized by systems of oppression, and nourish the collective vision that “another world is possible.”
Gail Lillian
(she/her)
Conflict Transformation Practitioner
Gail is a communication specialist, helping clients reach their potential in interpersonal dynamics, public speaking, and messaging, with over a decade of expertise in conflict resolution. She’s a leadership facilitator for the Stanford Business School’s Interpersonal Dynamics class, and a business consultant for the SBDC.
In addition to her work in communication and leadership through her agency, Intent2Impact Consulting, Gail is also a business strategist and serial entrepreneur. Most notably, she started and ran a successful restaurant, food truck and catering business in Oakland.
When she isn’t working, she’s training toward pipe dreams of competing on American Ninja Warrior, designing elaborate cookies, and hiking with her dog George in the beautiful hills of the Bay area.
karina norton
(they/them)
Senior Practitioner - Conflict Transformation for Movement Spaces
karina (they/them) is a mediator, healer, transformative justice (TJ) practitioner, and digital organizer that takes a collaborative, collectivist approach to movement, accountability, and education work. After graduating from Vassar College with concentrations in Africana Studies, Political Science, and Francophone Studies, they joined the Spring Up collective doing TJ work, which introduced them to Restorative Justice and the SEEDS family.
karina is a facilitator and coach with Spring Up, a coach and organizer with the Newburgh LGBTQ Center, and an advocate for Disabled, mad, and mentally ill students with Project LETS in addition to their capacity as Interim School Services Coordinator. They love tending to their plants, creating spaces that center joy and laughter, and believe that building intentional, accountable relationships and communities rooted in care and consent can transform our worlds.
Kelen Laine
she/her or they/them)
Senior School Services Practitioner
Kelen Laine (she/her or they/them) has been exploring the healing of interdependence, with a focus on conflict transformation, trauma healing, and complex living systems, for the last 14 years. As a facilitator, trainer, coach, mediator, and companion, she is honored to support others to heal and evolve our relationships and the webs they exist within. She brings deep ecology, intergenerational somatic healing, harm repair, communication skills, grief work, and candid explorations of emotions, accountability, shame, consent, and soul to groups reaching for generative relationships and more holistic belonging.
Kelen is a graduate of Duke University. Her experience is extensively multi-cultural and includes restorative justice, public education, crisis response, de-escalation, conflict resolution, domestic violence and sexual assault counseling, youth care, human resources, and consulting. She has also worked as an organic veggie farmer, in the Alaska salmon industry, and in ecological regeneration.
She deeply values integrity, friendship, bodies, music, genuine soulful presence, houseplants, great lighting, the rawness of winter ocean storms, the subtleties in peoples' faces, exploring the world by bike, dancing from the inside out, and whatever liberates the inner creature in each of us.
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Kimi Mojica
(they/she)
Facilitator/Trainer
Kimi Mojica is an affiliate trainer, facilitator and mediator and has been helping individuals and organizations initiate positive change. They hold a Masters degree in Conflict Dispute Resolution from the University of Oregon School of Law. Guided by a love of experiential learning, has worked in the fields of higher education and philanthropy for over 15 years with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, communication, leadership and team development. As a dedicated practitioner of Vipassana meditation since 2003, her pedagogy is firmly grounded in Buddhist principles of compassion, mindfulness and liberation. Kimi’s work in the field of peace studies extends to incorporating restorative justice/circle practices with dharma practitioners at the East Bay Meditation Center, in addition to teaching self-defense as a radical embodiment practice at Hand to Hand Kajukenbo and Self Defense Center, both in Oakland, CA.
Kimi currently serves as the Director of Programs at the International House at UC Berkeley and has been invited to speak, train and facilitate nationally at Wisdom 2.0, the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity and the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation among others.
Kusum Crimmel
(she/her)
Practitioner
Kusum Crimmel’s work is to inspire people to live more deeply and firmly into accountability and integrity, thereby accessing higher levels of joy and embodied love. She is a facilitator of transformational change and creates space for truth, (re)conciliation, and healing to reclaim our humanity and the humanity of others. She has spent nearly two decades working with teenagers; eleven of those years at Oakland Tech High School where she built up a vibrant and highly acclaimed, peer-based Restorative Justice program. She is an LCSW, has 10 years of rape-crisis counseling experience and more than 8 plus years of training with Generative Somatics, expanding her understanding of trauma and the impact of interpersonal, generational and socially pervasive trauma (racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, etc.). She is a co-creator of FacingIn, a restorative justice consulting business, and recently launched another business, Dissecting Whiteness, which offers services to people and organizations invested in dismantling whiteness and white supremacy and the healing of those impacted by racialized harm and conflict.
She is a single parent to a fourteen-year old singer, dancer and budding actress. She is auntie to a bright and courageous four-year old, and an ongoing mentor to countless young people who she has connected with over the last seventeen years. Dance is her favorite form of therapy and she loves to laugh until her belly hurts.
Latriece Love-Goodlett
(she/her)
Facilitator/Trainer
Latriece Love-Goodlett is the former Community Programs Manager at SEEDS, and she has now transitioned into a new role as a trainer. She is excited to work for an organization that is deeply committed to cultivating community, relationships, and nurturing the transformative ability brought about by sitting with, reflecting on, and working through conflict and difficult conversations, including the stories we tell ourselves and share with others. She feels deeply moved by the empowerment that comes from participating in the work of holding space, acknowledging our humanity, and meeting people where they are to transform their lives. She believes that what we do each day matters and the prospect of working for SEEDS is an opportunity she relishes. It is an opportunity each day to practice Kuumba, with the hope of leaving the community in a more beautiful and beneficial condition than that in which we inherited it.
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Latriece holds a BA in Liberal Arts from Sonoma State University from the Hutchins Program. She enjoys being of service and encouraging people to be their authentic and whole selves as well as speaking their truths. She has several years of work experience in the private sector, local and federal governments, and non-profits. In her spare time, Latriece likes to sing and perform live music and spoken word and spend time with her loving family. She aspires every day to be the best version of herself so that she can make her ancestors, family and herself proud. Latriece believes doing so acknowledges and ensures that the collective sacrifices, endurance, trials, good deeds, and triumphs are not in vain.
Lauren Lofton
(they/them)
Senior Practitioner/Facilitator/Trainer
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This photo expresses the gender expansiveness of this staff member. Thank you to non-binary and transgender professionals who paved the way with gender diverse headshots.
Lauren is a conflict transformation practitioner, mediator, and trainer for SEEDS. They are an attorney who began their conflict transformation journey in Alternative Dispute Resolution. They joined the SEEDS community in 2017 as a part-time practitioner and eventually as core staff. Lauren is proud to remain a part-practitioner and SEEDS community member.
As the Special Projects Manager, they specialized in the creation of sustainable business development models and program projects in partnership with executive leadership and effective program implementation and impact. They also acted as the communications team lead. They co-developed SEEDS' DEIB framework, Theory of Action/Change, and supported organization-wide program evaluation and organizational effectiveness through staff retreats.
Lauren is bi-racial Black/white, a proud member of the LGBT+ community, a person with a non-visible disability and neurodivergence. Their lived experiences shape their conflict transformation practices as an intersectional, trauma-informed, bridge builder and peace keeper. Lauren has been recognized with a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging award and was selected as a "Top 40 Under the Age of 40" by the LGBT+ Bar Association.
Working with community organizers in a personal and professional capacity has deeply impacted how they "show up" in the world. They are a firm believer that "the impossible" is possible and that our collective liberation is inevitable. They collaboratively create strategies to uproot systems of oppression and plant the seeds of conflict transformation in support of a new and different world. Lauren is a born and raised San Franciscan and an East Bay transplant for more than a decade. They enjoy spending time with loved ones, and their Buddhist community, swimming, traveling, and writing. They also believe in resting for resilience and resistance.
Phoebe Smith
(she/her)
Conflict Transformation Practitioner and Trainer
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Email: phoebesmith70@gmail.com
Contact Info: http://bit.ly/PSContactinfo
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Website: http://www.rpintegration.org/
Phoebe Smith (she/her) is a veteran teacher of 18 years K-8 and a facilitator of special curricula related to health education, mental health wellness, community building, mediation, and restorative practices for individuals and large groups. Phoebe is also a certified mediator through Community Boards San Francisco and the SEEDS Organization of Berkeley.
She currently works as a Restorative Practices Practitioner supporting academic communities and organizations in RP training, implementation, and integration. With 10 years of experience, Phoebe is a highly recommended RP trainer circle keeper, and coach.
Phoebe has earned a Master's in Public Health, Community Organization, and a Master's in Education, Curriculum Development. She specializes in coaching and guiding staff, students, organizations, and families through restorative practices healing, and community-building processes.
Phoebe loves taking long walks with her partner Mark and fur-baby Bella Blu and going on road trips short and long.
Rashmi Guttal
(she/they)
Rashmi (she/they) is a School Services Practioner, providing restorative justice practices to administrators, teaching staff, and parents/guardians. She has a deep passion for mediation, conflict resolution, and restorative/transformative justice practices. Stemming from her South Asian, Hindu, and Buddhist roots, Rashmi also provides meditation, somatic, and asana (physical form of yoga) practices in community settings, particularly Queer, BIPOC, and differently-abled communities. She loves integrating all parts of her work and passions together.
In her free time she enjoys traveling, creating ceramics, hiking, and being around her beloved community.
Practitioner
Robin Pomerenke
(they/them)
Conflict Transformation Practitioner and Trainer
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Social: @mokshacollab (insta)
Website: https://www.mokshacollab.com/
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Robin, a law grad turned professional faerie (children's entertainer), is passionate about growing our capacities for communication involving play and creativity. Growing up in a codependent household, they took on mediation roles early on in their personal life. It wasn't until taking a negotiations class in law school that they began to explore conflict resolution with intention.
Through the UC Hastings Mediation Clinic, they explored mediation in a legal context, spending every week mediating in small claims court. After law school they continued to pursue mediation by working in a program to help curb evictions through housing mediation called Conflict Intervention Service within the SF Bar Association. Throughout all of these experiences, they have continued to show up in extravagant outfits, prioritizing their love of fashion, play and expression in all they do. They are an activist, event organizer, and member of the queer community. Through a focus on feelings and building emotional intelligence, they try to embody the concept of softness as power.
Sarah Dobson
(she/her)
Sarah Dobson is a restorative justice trainer and practitioner, and has been working in peacebuilding and conflict transformation for the last 12 years in the US, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. She earned her M.A. in Gender and Peacebuilding from the UN mandated University for Peace and has a particular passion for preventing gender based violence and building community capacity for restorative responses to harm. Sarah is currently serving as
Associate Director of Student Life and Leadership Development at the University of California, Berkeley. She is bilingual in English and Spanish and provides training, restorative processes, mediations, coaching, and facilitated group dialogues in the Bay area and virtually. She loves petting furry animals, playing team sports, and meandering in thick forests.
Dr. Sherry
Congrave Wilson
(she/her)
Sherry Congrave Wilson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Town Project, and was formerly the Director of School Services at SEEDS. The Town Project’s immediate goal is to support educational institutions to embody restorative practices, to address the systemic oppression that disproportionately impacts communities of color and to promote societal healing and transformative solutions to conflict.
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She started her career as a high school Social Studies teacher in San Diego and San Lorenzo, California. She then shifted her focus to nonprofit management while earning a Masters in Educational Equity and Social Justice at San Francisco State University. She eventually continued her graduate studies and earned a doctorate in Educational Equity and an administrative credential at Mills College. She has conducted domestic and global educational research in the U.S., China, Japan and Cameroon highlighting issues around equity, racial identity development and arts based education.
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In her free time, Sherry enjoys collecting books, cooking, camping, art, traveling, roller skating and going on urban hikes.
Suzanne Pegas
(she/they)
Suzanne is an educator, restorative justice practitioner, mediator, activist, and naturalist, with a deep commitment to attending to human and natural ecosystems. She has 25 years of experience creating experiential learning opportunities for youth and adults. As well, Suzanne has decades of experience facilitating group efforts toward consensus while holding diverging interests. As a queer woman of Greek, Mexican, English, and German ancestry, Suzanne remains engaged in exploring the complexities, privileges, and liabilities of embodying Mexican ancestry and white skin privilege. Suzanne’s work is informed by the UNtraining, Vipassana meditation, 12-step process, activism around homelessness, police brutality, and environmental justice. Most recently she worked as a restorative justice facilitator for Oakland Unified Schools. She loves singing and being on her bicycle.
Tim Harlan-Marks
(they/them)
Tim (they/them) is a facilitator, trainer, organizer, and mediator. They have spent the last 15+ years working in environmental and social justice nonprofits, with a particular focus on working with white folks to confront racism and men to confront sexism. Tim brings a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from their study of Transformative Justice, conflict mediation, coaching, Mindful Facilitation, Processwork, Kingian Nonviolence and experiential education. What’s more is they love to sing harmonies, cry in movie theaters, and dance in front of the bathroom mirror.
About their work, Tim says:
“I believe in the capacity of organizations, communities, and teams to confront the complex challenges of our era and chart a new course together. I know how daunting this can feel as we face mounting, overlapping crises. And yet I believe we must. What we face today demands the sort of wisdom and innovation that's available only in our collective genius. The sort that emerges from engaging the diversity of our experiences, histories and perspectives. This is the work I do. Facilitating the conditions to say what needs to be said, listen to what needs to be heard, find one another across our differences and illuminate the path ahead.”
Tim is the principal at Crossing the Flood (www.crossingtheflood.com) and an equity trainer/consultant with Partners for Collaborative Change (www.collabchange.org).
Tuquan Harrison
(he/they)
Conflict Transformation Practitioner
Tuquan Harrison (he/they) is a Conflict Transformation Practitioner at SEEDS. Tuquan leads their facilitation, consulting, and coaching work through a racial equity and anti-oppression lens, with experience supporting government entities, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations operationalizing Equity and Inclusion to promote sustainable work environments for all. Tuquan has a strong track record of success in strategy development, program design, implementation, and grant making efforts focused on improving social and economic justice outcomes for low-income communities and communities of color in the Bay Area.
Tuquan is the Principal Consultant for their firm, Intersectional Futures For All, providing services that include: curriculum design, diversity training, coaching, organization strategic planning, grant writing, and advising early-stage nonprofits with capacity building and technical assistance.
As a Black Non-binary person, Tuquan seeks to transform ecosystems through reparative justice practices that seek to heal at the individual, organizational, and community levels – creating a future accessible to all.
Yvette Durazo
(she/her)
Conflict Transformation Practitioner
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Yvette Durazo, MA, ACC is the principal consultant of Unitive Consulting, a workplace effectiveness, strategic conflict management, and leadership development firm. Mr. Durazo brings innovative techniques to promote a positive workplace culture in organizations to encourage trust, productive human capital engagement, and inclusion. Clients benefit from her wealth of knowledge and professional experience in the art of building a trusting workplace relationship. Some of her services included, training, mediating conflicts in the workplace, anti-bullying prevention, settlement negotiations, developing dispute system design, and bringing unique strategies to address the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) workplace.
She is passionate about optimizing professionals and teams to engage in constructive problem-solving communication toward instilling respect, civility, and collaboration. She believes that human conflict is one of the most important things organizations must learn to work with and harness to overcome any derailing of employees’ performance and engagement. Her methodologies are like a vitamin that is the breath of life to the immunity of organizations.
Presently, Yvette is an instructor for the Human Resource Management Certification program at the University of California, Santa Clara Extension Silicon Valley. She also teaches for Portland State University Mediation Skill courses for undergraduate students. She holds an ACC coaching credential from the International Coach Federation, a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution, Negotiation, and Peacebuilding from California State University Dominguez Hills, and an undergraduate degree in International Business from San Diego State University. She is certified in H.R. Management, mediator, restorative justice facilitator, project management and non-violence communication specialist. She is a former Core Adjunct Professor at National University, where she taught courses in Alternative Dispute Resolution, Mediation, and Communication for over six years. She is also the former ADR Program Administrator for the Superior Court of California, Alameda County. Yvette is fully bilingual in Spanish and has expertise with cultural diversity and inclusion.