Board
DRJ is always looking to build our community. We have many volunteer roles and positions available. If you are interested in becoming a community volunteer or learning about other ways to get involved please contact us.
Our Board of Directors meets every third Thursday of the month. At our annual meeting we elect officers, receive reports on the activities of the board, and determine the direction of the board for the coming year. We have between five and eleven directors at any given time. Our officers consist of two co-chairs.
Please email ALL@DowneastRestoraticeJustice.org with any questions, or for a copy of our bylaws or annual reports.
Directors
Kayla Gagnon
Restorative Youth and Community Coordinator.
Kayla is a tender of relationships who has heeded to the call of her ancestors to bridge our modern divides & bring us back to circling together in community. Values such as decolonization & abolitionism inform much of her work. She has spent much time in her life working as an advocate for the Earth, Indigenous Rights here on Turtle Island, Survivors of gender/sexual based violence, and Spanish speaking communities across Mexico & the United States. She graduated from College of the Atlantic with a Bachelors in Human Ecology where her senior thesis work focused on femicide & sexual based violence in Mexico & the U.S. Trauma Informed Care & Consent Education have been a major focus of her work in prevention of community and interpersonal violence. In her time not spent working with DRJ, she works as a elderly caretaker/death doula, and land tender. Kayla also takes great pride in being an Auntie to many young ones in her life. While she has a background in Somatic Therapy, her dog, Rose, is her greatest teacher & ally in keeping her grounded in the importance of play and movement.
Corrie Hunkler
Youth Engagement Coordinator for Healthy Acadia. Corrie partners with Maine Youth Action Network to provide Restorative Practices trainings to student classes and communities.
Karen Roper
A small business owner in Southwest Harbor, Karen has been involved with Restorative Justice since 2014 and served as a mentor, circle facilitator & board member over the years. Her hope is through restorative circles & practicing restorative language broadly, community members can understand how their actions impact those around them & use those skills when misunderstandings occur.
Leslie Ross
Program and Case Coordinator.
Leslie inherited from her familial elders strong visions of the possibility of a just world and just communities of inclusion, compassion and dialogue. Familial elders –generations of migrants and immigrants– who even through displacements held fast with connecting to earth, people and place no matter where they were. In migrant footsteps of their own, from Turkey to France to Quebec, Leslie moved to New York City, lived, worked, played and connected there for 30 years before moving to Downeast Maine in 2014. Deeply engaged in both community gardens and collaborative experimental art communities in NYC, she is now as engaged in the restorative and transformative work and communities here.
Leslie sees her current restorative work as the natural development and continuous journey from past community and collaborative art, music and performance work, all under a collective essence of some sort, but most importantly as the syntheses of her political and spiritual being. Abolitionist at heart in every sense, and despite the impossible and unbearable task of having to navigate the very real authoritarian, dismissive and dehumanizing aspects of the cultures and systems we live within, she still believes in the healing power that can arise when we are given the opportunity to see each other whole. She is working towards a time when community-based response to all harm is held by communities themselves.
Leslie continues to play, compose and collaborate whenever possible, sea swims as weather allows, gardens and cooks, spins and knits. With her partner, they run and host residencies and events in an old canning factory that is the home they share along with books, sheep, cats, chickens and canaries.
Brad Sealfon
Media Freelancer & Maine Licensed Arborist. As the freshman member of the board, Brad is excited to help speed to spread of restorative practices using his background in marketing and corporate training. In New York, Brad formerly served on the board of The Interactive Museum and RMS Medical Products.
Jason Whiteman
Restorative Schools Coordinator.
Raised near a river, and field that lead to the New England woods he ran through, Jason has always felt deeply connected to nature. He worked there towards the highest levels in soccer, playing semi-pro with teams on east and west coasts, and coming to understand creativity, collaboration, community building, and dedication.
Moving to California after college, Jason became rooted in social work, taking young adults in the justice system out to the mountains to hike and camp, and completing graduate studies in counseling. After that he did more graduate study, this time in education, and became an elementary school teacher for the Oakland Unified School District. In time he became an assistant principal for several city schools in the Bay Area, and in these further developed his skills and love for Restorative Justice (RJ).
These days he is completing a Masters degree in RJ, with the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP). He joined Downeast Restorative Justice in the Spring of 2023, and from here facilitates the whole of the RJ process in schools around Hancock County, Maine.
Jason believes we all have a gift, and that educators ideally can help each young person find and share what is special for them. You may hear him saying: “Sawubona” (or “I see you” in Zulu) to children and other people, everywhere. Outside of schools, he loves reading, to write poetry, and to listen to tales and tell them around campfires. To better know people he will often ask: “Please tell me a story?” Passionate about human dignity and equity for all marginalized people, he believes in working with whole systems instead of against them. And he smiles deeply when speaking of his son Madison and his daughter Emery: “They are good souls … they laugh, and are kind.”
Tara Young
Drug Free Communities Program Coordinator for Healthy Acadia. Youth substance use can often result in school suspension or expulsion, and restorative practices can give teachers and principals the opportunity to explore the root causes of students’ negative behaviors and provide the services or supports they need to address the root causes of behaviors, rather than continually responding to symptoms.