A fourth-generation Bostonian, Kara Hayes is a LGBTQIA+ survivor of severe violence and a policy analyst. Her community programming includes collaboration with MCI Norfolk's Restorative Justice Program in a pilot program that brought members of the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office and incarcerated facilitators participating in Restorative Justice programming into community circle work to discuss common themes of community and accountability. Among her achievements during her tenure as Director of Victim Witness Assistance, she established the first community liaison to the LGBTQIA+ community (a position she currently holds), wrote the seminal manual for survivors of Homicide victims navigating the Criminal Justice System, and was certified to handle Indy the first Courthouse Facility Dog placed in a prosecutorial agency in New England. Her areas of expertise include complex victimization, Restorative Justice, mental health, alternative criminal justice response models, juvenile diversion, intimate partner violence, drug, and other specialty courts, reentry, issues affecting women and children, and issues relevant to the LGBTQIA+ community. When not at work, she promotes awareness of social justice issues and raises funds for LGBTQIA+ programs. She works as a volunteer in both the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk and the South Bay House of Correction. A circle keeper for twenty-five years, she was trained in the Peacemaking Circle process by many teachers, including Jon Wilson, Harold Gatensby and Mark Wedge, Elders of the Tanglis Tlingit Nation, Judge Barry Stuart, retired First Chief Judge of the Yukon Territory, the Insight Prison Project, the University of Minnesota Center for Restorative Justice, Hidden Water, Amplify RJ, Carolyn Boyes-Watson the extended ROCA Community, Gwen Jones, Kathleen McGooey author of "The Little Book of Restorative Teaching Tools", Priya Parker author of "The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters" and Kay Pranis, International Restorative Justice Planner and author of "Peacemaking Circles: From Crime to Community." She is committed to facilitating restorative spaces through a lens of Anti-Racism, Decolonization and Victim-centered praxis.