Staff and Board

RJI is an active community of restorative practitioners, advocates and supporters, organized by our intrepid director and board. 

Mika Dashman – Founding Director

Mika Dashman is an attorney and restorative justice practitioner. She is also a New York State-certified mediator and has mediated criminal court cases and facilitated community conferences through the New York Peace Institute. Mika facilitates peacemaking/community-building circles for organizations, student and professional groups. She was awarded the David Lerman Memorial Fund Fellowship in Restorative Justice by the Project for Integrating Law, Spirituality and Politics in both 2015 and 2017. She is also a contributor to the 2021 anthology, Listening to the Movement: Essays on New Growth and New Challenges in Restorative Justice. 

Prior to beginning her work in alternative dispute resolution, Mika spent more than six years providing direct legal services to indigent individuals at several New York City non-profits, including Housing Works, Inc., where she also worked on all aspects of the agency’s civil rights impact docket.

Mika is a graduate of the City University of New York School of Law and Sarah Lawrence College. 

Mary Morris – Dialogue for Justice Program Manager 

Mary Morris is a licensed creative arts therapist (drama therapist), restorative justice practitioner, community organizer, and abolitionist. Her clinical experience spans serving and walking alongside Black and brown people living with mental illness and/or grappling with substance use, and who are within the margins of systems including correctional and acute care facilities, shelters, and supportive housing by providing individual and group treatment. She has devised therapeutic theatre on Rikers Island, the DC Jail, with system-impacted youth, and with CollideOscope Repertory Theatre Company. Mary also has an independent practice, primarily focused on offering wellness workshops to directly impacted activists and supervising clinicians/graduate students. She is a core organizer for Curbfest for Political Prisoners with H.O.L.LA., a Beyond the Bars Alumni Fellow out of Columbia’s Center for Justice, and took part in Broadway Advocacy Coalition’s 2025 Theater of Change cohort. Mary is a graduate of Howard University (BFA) and New York University (MA). Additionally, Mary is on the core team of Kinetic, a faith-based arts collective and the owner of Sissy’s Sweets Bakery, honoring the legacy of her grandmother, and raising funds and awareness for Black women living with breast cancer. 

Anooj Bhandari – Deputy Director of Programs

Anooj Bhandari is a Community Organizer with passions for the relationship between community education and harm reduction practice, and exploring alternatives to, diversions from, and the elimination of, the carceral state. His work focuses on building microcosms that imagine and explore the possibility of liberation within the interpersonal. He co-organized On Our Terms, a participatory action research project creating a community-centered blueprint for RJ in schools and is an RJ facilitator with the New Jersey State Bar Foundation. He is particularly invested in developing restorative practices on a community and neighborhood level.

Anooj is an Artist, creating experimental performance and theater, and believing deeply in art as a process to ask quiet questions publicly, quite like restorative circle. He is an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists, where he writes, performs, and directs in their weekly show, The Infinite Wrench. He is an alumnus of EmergeNYC, the Hemispheric Institute’s Fellowship for Emerging Political Performance Artists, the Lighthouse Residency at the BEAM Center, and The Bandung Residency with the Asian American Arts Alliance and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts. Anooj is a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipient in the Theater Arts and a part of the Arts Faculty at Marymount Manhattan College.

East Luna – Administrative Associate

East Luna is a cultural architect, who has designed and sustained healing centered spaces for marginalized people since 2015. 

Her work began with annual poetry events in her high school titled Creators of the Universe. Her poetry mobilized high schoolers from all over NYC and together they formed Teens Take Charge. Through East’s co-leadership, Teens Take Charge became a youth-led movement.  Teens Take Charge platformed New York’s contemporary education issues and reached coalitions nationally and internationally.

East continued her research on contemporary education issues at Columbia University, and in June of 2019 became a founding member of the New York City Civil Rights History Project in partnership with Teachers College. She sits as an Associate Director.

East Luna is a proud drop out of Columbia University. She is a trained circle keeper and brings restorative practices as faculty for the Ella Fellowship at Sadie Nash Leadership. East is also a proud organizer for Black Trans Liberation Kitchen. She is a professionally performing poet, published model, published photographer, and an award winning organizer. 

Evelyn Alvarez, Board Member, Fundraising Committee Chair

Evelyn Alvarez is a Brooklyn-born daughter of Guatemalan parents, a full-spectrum doula, facilitator, and community builder who leads with love, strategy, and joy. She’s the founder of Eveolution, where she creates powerful learning spaces rooted in healing and equity, and the co-founder of BxReBirth, a collective of Black and Brown doulas serving families in the Bronx with compassion and care. Evelyn founded Prom King, making sure young people show up to their milestone moments looking and feeling confident and loved. She serves on her local community board and is the Bronx Ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Association, where she shares her experiences as a caregiver for her mother, who has late-stage Alzheimer’s. Most importantly, Evelyn is a mother, daughter, partner, and sister who is walking in purpose and pushing for systems that honor our humanity and brilliance.

Sabrina Hayeem-Ladani – Institutional Giving Consultant

Sabrina Hayeem-Ladani believes that meaningful human connection based in truth-telling, delight, and creativity is the key to bringing individuals, groups, and organizations into alignment so that they can fulfill their highest purpose. She brings 20 years of experience in the non-profit sector, working currently as an institutional giving consultant to organizations working on the front lines of justice issues, as well as in the arts. Sabrina is a strong partner to her clients in stewarding thoughtful revenue strategies, while holding mission, goals, and relationships as central to her work. Born and raised in New York City, she is a published poet and multi-disciplinary artist, and has performed her work across the globe. She studied theater at Marymount Manhattan College, and resides in Brooklyn. 

Trisa Edmonson, Board Chair

Trisa Edmonson (she/hers) was born and raised in San Francisco’s East Bay Area and currently resides in Jersey City, NJ. She is an educator, artist, advocate, and changemaker who spent the first 20 years of her career creating and providing workforce development, educational, and re-entry programming to disengaged and disenfranchised adolescents and young adults. Trisa first became acquainted with restorative practices in 2015 while working with the Harlem Justice Corps, a demonstration project at the Center for Justice Innovation (then Center of Court Innovation). Trisa is an anti-racism educator and restorative justice practitioner. She now works with the ACLU where she spearheads equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives amongst the 54 state affiliates across the country. She is the mother to a thoughtful and compassionate “little-big-kid” named Kamari. 

Vanessa Meterko, Board Member, Personnel Committee Chair

Vanessa Meterko has dedicated her career to leveraging science to advance justice. For nearly 15 years at the Innocence Project, her research has furthered legal and policy advocacy to free the wrongfully convicted, prevent future injustice, and create more equitable and compassionate systems for all.

Beyond wrongful convictions, Vanessa’s research and publications focus on cognitive biases, microaggressions, and health care.

Outside the office, Vanessa has volunteered with Mount Sinai’s Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention program. For over a decade, she provided direct, trauma-informed support for safety and self-determination to survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence in emergency departments across New York City.

A lifelong art student, Vanessa is passionate about the power of creative practices to nourish, connect, and rewrite narratives about our carceral system.

She believes in Restorative Justice Initiative’s values of interdependence and racial justice, and looks forward to partnering with the rest of the board, staff, and broader community to promote non-punitive accountability and healing in the wake of interpersonal and systemic harms. 

Leslie Morioka, Board Treasurer

Leslie Morioka is an attorney with almost 30 years of experience in litigation, transactional and regulatory matters for various entities worldwide at a global law firm. She built a substantial pro bono practice, with individuals and organizations as clients, to address issues of human and civil rights, and social, economic, and environmental justice and has resolved disputes using mediation and arbitration. She has both local and state government and non-profit experience and is currently a part-time hearing officer for the City of New York, while continuing to assist with pro bono clients and to be involved with activities relating to sustainability and ocean conservation as well as a program targeting at-risk youth in Brooklyn.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i, Leslie enjoys building collaborations, mentoring others, and reaching innovative solutions while reaching back to integrate indigenous values and principles. Leslie has an MPA/JD from Pace University and a BA in Biology from Barnard College of Columbia University.

Karen P. Simmons, Board Member

Karen P. Simmons is the former Executive Director of The Children’s Law Center (CLC), a nonprofit law firm that represents children in the Family and Supreme Court. She is a trauma informed advocate, social justice focused and community minded.  Karen was the first Director of the Bronx Felony Drug Court and was the Managing Attorney for two trial offices with the Legal Aid Society. As an IOLA fellow with Legal Services NYC, Karen co-founded Legal Information for Families Today (LIFT) now Family Legal Care. Along with her law degree, Karen has a master’s in public administration with a specialization in program design, development, and implementation and she is currently a consultant, and adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School, CUNY School of Law, and Southern New Hampshire University. 

Hemanth Venkataraman, Board Member

Hemanth Venkataraman has dedicated his entire career to education and youth empowerment. He began his career as a NYC DOE high school teacher and then co-founded a charter school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with an innovative approach to school culture and climate. One of New York’s earliest adopters of trauma-informed pedagogy, social-emotional learning, and mindfulness practices, the school was studied as a model for others and was a haven for families who felt marginalized or had needs unmet by traditional schools. Hemanth fully integrated restorative practices into the school’s culture and disciplinary procedures. These initiatives had a transformative impact on the school community and were life-changing for many students and for Hemanth himself. In 2019, Hemanth decided to dedicate his life to the proliferation of restorative practices and founded School Culture Solutions, providing training and coaching in restorative practices to schools throughout New York City and its surrounding districts. Hemanth also works with organizations such as nonprofits and academic medical institutions, teaching how to promote health equity by infusing a restorative mindset among staff and building stronger relationships with patients and surrounding communities.

Hemanth lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and two children. He has an engineering degree from Columbia University and Master’s Degrees from CUNY City College and the International Institute for Restorative Practices. In his spare time, Hemanth is an endurance athlete, spoken-word artist, and live music enthusiast.

Ryan Williams, Board Member

Ryan Williams is an organizational strategist, with over a decade of experience in program leadership and capacity building. His career began in direct service, first as a teacher then as founding program director at Good Projects in Washington, DC. Overseeing a portfolio of place-based programs including a credible messenger initiative, out-of-school time education program and family success planning initiative, restorative justice served as both a critical response and a proactive approach to community building.

Later working at Ramapo for Children, he designed restorative justice action plans in partnership with school and district leaders in NYC. Later as a consultant at Nonprofit Finance Fund, he advised funders and clients to address organizational challenges and opportunities tied to financial health. Through direct consulting, cohort-based initiatives and capacity building training, he’s advocated for a more equitable funding landscape for nonprofits sector-wide.

Through Sabali LLC, his independent consulting practice, Ryan has since built out his restorative finance framework that brings restorative practices into financial strategy through circle practice, a money narrative model, and structured storytelling. It treats capacity building as relational and trauma-aware rather than technical, and it asks organizations to reckon with how systemic exclusion has shaped their relationship to money.

He holds a B.S. in Criminology from Florida State University, a Certificate in Community Development Finance from the University of New Hampshire and is BoardSource Certified Nonprofit Board Consultant. In Ryan’s free time, he loves to grill and spend time with his family at the beach. 

Kathleen Pequeño, Board Emerita and Advisor

Kathleen is a social justice communications specialist who focuses her work on narrative strategy and the effective use of data for decision-making. Kathleen sent her first media release in 1988 as part of the buildup to the first National Coming Out Day. Since then, she has taken a broad intersectional approach to communications for justice. She has volunteered, worked and consulted with well over a hundred organizations over the last few decades on issues including racial and economic justice, queer liberation, ending the over-reliance on incarceration to solve our problems and building a community of economic justice for farmworkers.

Kathleen has used a transformative justice approach to reclaim her own life and heart after the murder of her brother in 1985. Kathleen is currently the communications director at North Star Fund, New York’s community foundation that focuses on funding equity, peace and justice in New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Header Photo by Mika Dashman