Karena is a lover and a fighter. She believes that well-being is integral to achieving community safety and collective liberation.
Karena developed an early-in-her-bones-understanding of what it is to be with the relational complexities that restorative justice asks us to hold; sitting in prison-based restorative justice circles she found the praxis. She is the Co-Founding Director of STRONGHOLD, an organization that works at the intersection of restorative and racial justice to create co-accountable communities of belonging. Karena is also a co-founding member of the Transformative Prison Workgroup (TPW), a CA coalition that breaks isolation & builds political power as an integral step toward abolition. She has worked at the intersection of mental health, justice, and healing for over twenty years and has consulted and spoken at the community, state, national, and international levels.
Karena loves all things food, learning from horses, and envisions her future on a sun-drenched compound, full of her beloveds. Karena maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Berkeley, CA.
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