Celia Kutz
Celia Kutz is a facilitator and trainer, radicalized through the mass mobilization movement in the early 2000’s. She’s been with Training for Change since 2009 training and facilitating thousands of groups across the social justice left. Currently she’s focused on sticky, tense and disorienting group dynamics, supporting organizers and movement directors to make embodied decisions. She lives with her dog and partner with the land of the Mohawk and Mohican, along the banks of the Hudson River, the Muheakunnk, The River that Runs Both Ways. She is guided by her work with Sacred Vibes Apothecary, Process Work Practitioners, the School for Global Somatics, and by the Jewish women who have taught her resilience, compassion and bravery.
Erika Sasson
Erika Sasson is an attorney and restorative justice practitioner focused on creating opportunities for difficult conversations, while reimagining how we relate to each other in the aftermath of harm. Her work is focused on areas of complex harm, such as intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and homicide. Erika’s work is anchored by her experiences learning directly from Native American peacemakers from across North America. She spent over a decade leading the creation of restorative justice programming at the Center for Justice Innovation. She currently teaches at Vermont Law School and is a 2023 recipient of The David Prize. Originally from Canada, Erika moved to New York in 2009 and is raising a family with her partner Misha in Brooklyn. Learn more at erikasasson.com.
Kazu Haga
Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice with over 25 years of experience in social change work, a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network, a founding core member of the Ahimsa Collective, a YES! Jam facilitator, and author of the books Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. He works with incarcerated people, youth, and activists from around the country. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA. Learn more at kazuhaga.com and check out his writings at kazuhaga.substack.com.
Shilpa Jain
Shilpa Jain currently co-creating home and community with her partner in Oakland/Berkeley, CA (Ohlone ancestral lands). She collaborates on community-building, healing, transformative approaches to conflict, leadership coaching, and more, with a variety of partners. Shilpa had served as the Executive Director of YES! for 11+ years, working with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal, and systemic change, and was a learning activist for 10 years with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India. All of her work seeks to uncover ways for people to free themselves from dominating, soul-crushing institutions and to live in greater alignment with their hearts and deepest values, their local communities, and with nature. Find more of her writing at shilpajain.substack.com.
Sonya Shah
Sonya Shah initiated The Ahimsa Collective in 2016. She has worked at the intersection of healing and justice, restorative & transformative justice practices, and interrupting sexual violence for the past 20 years. She has been involved in land-based healing work for the last five years. Sonya is also an Associate Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies and has been teaching there since 2004. Central to her core values are nurturing community belonging, love, and compassion. She is a first-generation immigrant from the Northwestern part of India. Sonya feels at home in nature and spends a lot of time walking around the woods with her dog. She has two amazing children who remind her what it means to be in love all the time. Sonya grew up in New York and currently resides in Northern California.