Advisory Council
The Restorative Justice Advisory Council is composed of experts in disproportionate minority representation, restorative and juvenile justice, child welfare, education, victim advocacy and trauma healing. The Advisory Council has worked with American Humane staff to develop vital components of our Restorative Justice for Youth Initiative.
Advisory Council Members
Susan Blackburn is a juvenile court consultant with the Pennsylvania Juvenile Court Judges' Commission. She holds the position of balanced and restorative justice specialist and works out of the Center for Juvenile Justice Training and Research at Shippensburg University. She serves as the project director for the Juvenile Justice Enhancement Training Initiative. She has trained nationally on balanced and restorative justice. Previously, Blackburn was the agency director for Somerset County Probation and Youth Services. She was responsible for the administration of four departments: Adult Probation, Juvenile Probation, Children and Youth Services and the Regional Training Center for Children and Youth Services. Blackburn is a gubernatorial appointee to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Committee of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
Constance Burgess-Moffett is a nationally recognized family partner, as well as a seasoned trainer, facilitator and keynote speaker. As a facilitator, she works primarily on organizational change initiatives. As a trainer, she has worked with administrators, managers, consultants and community organizations. She helps community-based organizations and governmental agencies develop interagency collaboration, strategic planning, leadership skills, cultural competence and planning processes for systems change. Her primary focus is helping clients develop innovative solutions to complex issues while enhancing the quality of thinking and interacting in human systems. Her contributions to systems change are known across the country. While demonstrating a high knowledge of and regard for the unique needs presented by rural and urban communities of all sizes, Burgess-Moffett exhibits a firm grasp of disproportionality, system of care development, Wraparound, mental health services, and community-based care.
Jorge Cabrera is senior director for the Casey Family Programs – San Diego field office, providing direct services to foster youth. He engages in collaborative and systems improvement efforts in partnership with the public child welfare system and other community organizations. Cabrera holds an M.S.W. from Arizona State University. Prior to his work for Casey, he worked in Tucson, Ariz., as a family therapist with a focus on serving Latino families and children who were involved in the child welfare system. He has a strong interest and experience in building partnerships that effectively impact the lives and well-being of children and families of color. He has presented at national conferences focusing on the development of collaborative efforts that best serve kinship care families, the intersection of immigration and child welfare, and the delivery of clinical services to underserved populations.
Lucille Echohawk is strategic advisor for Indian Child Welfare Programs, Casey Family Programs. She is a member of the Pawnee Tribe. Lucille is a founder and former board chair of Native Americans in Philanthropy and of the Denver Indian Family Resource Center, where she and her family established the Jewel LittleSoldier EchoHawk Memorial Endowment Fund. She currently serves on the executive committee for the Child Welfare League of America’s Board of Directors. She has received numerous awards, most recently the Louis T. Delgado Distinguished Grantmaker Award from Native Americans in Philanthropy and the Founders Alumni Award from Erikson Institute for Early Education in 2007. In 1989, Lucille became a foster parent and then legal guardian of 7-year-old Jewel Marie LittleSoldier. Jewel had been in the public foster care system for five years. At 15, Jewel was convicted of motor vehicle theft and, after several probation violations, was committed to the juvenile justice system. Her sojourn through that system was a great learning experience for both Echohawk and Jewel. At 19, as a runaway, Jewel became a victim of suicide.
Michael Harris is the deputy director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute. In this capacity he is responsible for doing work to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in Burns' sites, as well as supervising program managers and other staff. He was previously assistant director and staff attorney of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, where he worked on a wide range of issues affecting the African-American community, particularly juvenile justice and education. While at LCCR, he also represented clients in cases involving environmental justice, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, community economic development, redistricting and retail discrimination.
Don L. Johnson is a restorative justice practitioner, consultant and trainer. He also served as a state and county prosecutor for over 25 years. Don is active in the field of restorative justice, with an emphasis on peacemaking circles. He has provided training and technical assistance for restorative justice initiatives in Canada, Jamaica and the United States. He has served as a consultant and trainer for the National Institute of Corrections. He has examined the role of the prosecutor in restorative justice, as a consultant to the Balanced and Restorative Justice Project, Florida Atlantic University. Don currently works in the Juvenile Prosecution Section, Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis. His duties include prosecution of criminal, delinquent and petty offenses committed by youth (10-17), and acting as liaison and restorative justice prosecutor and consultant for various elementary and secondary schools.
Azim Khamisa is presently the chairman, CEO and founder of the Tariq Khamisa Foundation and founder and national director of the Constant and Never Ending Improvement (CANEI) Program. In 2002, he received the prestigious “Search for Common Ground” award for “Building Peaceful Communities” and in 1997 was awarded the National Crime Victims Special Community Service Award.
Khamisa became a social activist after his 20-year-old son Tariq was murdered while delivering pizzas in 1995 by Tony Hicks, a 14-year-old gang member. Khamisa was inspired to transform his loss through the miraculous power of forgiveness. Believing that there were “victims at both ends of the gun,” he forgave Tony. A month after establishing the TKF Foundation, Khamisa invited Tony’s grandfather and guardian to join him. Together the two have brought their story and message to millions of school children. Khamisa is the author of the book Azim’s Bardo -- From Murder to Forgiveness -- A Father’s Journey.
Joan Pennell, M.S.W., Ph.D., is professor of social work and director of the Center for Family & Community Engagement at North Carolina State University. She previously directed the North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project. She was a principal investigator (with Gale Burford) for a Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, demonstration of family group conferencing in situations of child maltreatment and domestic violence. She was appointed to the National Crime Prevention Council (Canada), chaired its Youth Justice Committee and promoted social development strategies for crime prevention. In affiliation with American Humane, she served as an external evaluator of family team meetings for the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency, and now is a member of an international team studying the evidence for family group decision making. She co-authored Community Research as Empowerment, Family Group Conferencing: Evaluation Guidelinesand Widening the Circle: The Practice and Evaluation of Family Group Conferencing with Children, Youths, and Their Families. Pennell has presented internationally on family-centered meetings and is on the editorial board of Contemporary Justice Review and the Review Board of Child Welfare.
Charles Pratt serves as juvenile court judge in the Allen Superior Court – Family Relations Division in Fort Wayne, Ind. Judge Pratt is the chairman of the Indiana Judicial Center Juvenile Justice Improvement Committee and has formerly served as chair of the Juvenile Benchbook Committee. He initiated several court reform measures that included the use of mediation in dependency cases, adoption of family group decision making practices in permanency planning and the development of a dependency case Mental Health Specialty track. These reforms incorporate restorative justice principles into the critical stages of dependency cases. Judge Pratt is one of the two principle founders of the county’s positive youth development initiative, Great KIDS Make Great COMMUNITIES. His office hosts an Annual Conference on Youth that is attended by over 600 local professionals each year. The conference provides training on restorative justice, positive youth development and strength-based practices. Judge Pratt has provided training on court reform measures at state and national conferences, including the National Search Institute conferences and the American Humane Association Family Group Decision Making conferences.
Arnold Rosenfield has served for 25 years as a superior court judge, the majority of which was spent hearing juvenile court cases involving both delinquency and dependency. He is a member of local, state and national committees that promote implementation of restorative justice principles and practices throughout both California and the United States as a whole. He serves on the Judicial Council Advisory Committee, which advises a statewide governing body of the courts of California on rules and procedures for both juvenile and family courts. Rosenfield teaches and co-teaches college courses on restorative justice.
Tim Turley was employed with the Denver Juvenile Court as a probation officer supervising juvenile offenders. He was appointed to the position of director of court services, which included the positions of chief probation officer, clerk of court and district administrator from 1980 until his retirement in 2000. During that time, Tim was instrumental in creating a number of programs including Partners, Denver Juvenile Justice Integrated Treatment Network, Center for High Risk Youth Studies at Metropolitan State College, an alternative sentencing program for juvenile offenders, and Emerson Street School, a collaborative of the Denver Juvenile Court, Denver Public Schools and Denver Department of Human Services. In 2000 he served as project manager for the Denver Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative. Currently, he manages a program for suspended middle school students, works to institute restorative justice practices in Denver Public Schools, and participates in a number of prevention and intervention program initiatives within the district. Additionally, Turley serves as a consultant to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Reclaiming Futures Initiative.
Stephanie L. Walsh has 30-plus years’ experience in social services and nonprofit management. Her career has been dedicated to working with those who have been impacted by abuse and violence. She has served as the clinical and operational director for a variety of programs, including emergency shelter and community-based residential care for adolescents, in-home family therapy and family-based mental health services. She has been with The Center for Victims of Violence and Crime (CVVC) since 1997, first as associate director, and since December 2001 as the executive director. She is also the immediate past president of the Coalition of Pennsylvania Crime Victims Organizations.
Jeff Weaver, chief of police, was instrumental in introducing restorative justice practices in Sonoma County, Calif. Chief Weaver has partnered with Sebastopol-based Restorative Resources to offer services to juveniles arrested or cited by the Sebastopol Police. From those origins, he has become a regional advocate for expanding restorative justice, serving as a presenter and panelist at a restorative justice conference in Santa Rosa in 2007. In late 2008, Chief Weaver was the keynote speaker as Santa Barbara unveiled its countywide restorative efforts.
Howard Zehr has been a professor of restorative justice at the graduate Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., since 1996. Prior to that, he served for 19 years as director of the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Office on Crime and Justice. Dr. Zehr's book,Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice, has been a foundational work in the restorative justice movement, and he has been cited as the “grandfather of restorative justice.” He lectures and consults internationally on restorative justice and victim-offender conferencing. In May 2008, Dr. Zehr was appointed to the Victims Advisory Group of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The author of many publications, Dr. Zehr’s recent awards include the International Peace Award, Community of Christ, 2006; the Lifetime Achievement Award, Journal of Law and Religion, 2006; and The Howard Zehr Award, Restorative Justice Association of Virginia, 2005 (first annual award).
Elaine Zook Barge is the program director for Seminars for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va. She has been involved with STAR since its inception in 2002. STAR is an integrated training with a focus on addressing trauma, breaking cycles of violence, and transforming individuals and communities. The STAR framework draws on the practices of trauma healing, restorative justice, conflict transformation, human security and spirituality. During the 1980s and 1990s, Barge worked with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. In these countries she experienced firsthand the trauma of war, poverty and historical repression, but also witnessed individual and collective resilience in her work with widows, displaced families and communities.
