About

Molly R. Leach, Scholar/Practitioner Website  | Restorative Justice on The Rise, World's First RJ-Focused Public Online Podcast and Platform est. 2011 LinkTree includes links to Apple and Spotify streams/archives.

Molly R. Leach is a survivor of longterm parental incarceration (her mother, Rae Ann) and lived and witnessed the impacts when restorative justice options of any kind are absent. She is the founder and director of Restorative Justice on The Rise (RJOTR), established in 2011 as an international platform for restorative justice podcasts and live forums, education, dialogue, practice, and movement-building. Through hundreds of podcasts, public dialogues, panels, trainings, and educational events, RJOTR has brought practitioners, scholars, community leaders, and people directly impacted by systems of harm into conversation about the possibilities and challenges of restorative justice.

Molly has a longstanding relationship with the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice (NACRJ). She and RJOTR served as NACRJ's media liaison and onsite media staff for the 2015, 2017, and 2019 National Conferences, while Molly has also presented at NACRJ conferences. From 2014–2019, RJOTR collaborated further with NACRJ on international projects, panels, interviews, and educational events. Molly served as Restorative Justice Fellow with The Peace Alliance from 2014–2017.

A practitioner, educator, facilitator, and program builder, Molly previously served as Executive Director of Full Circle Restorative Justice, a Colorado community conferencing program and as early as 2011 was facilitating community-cultivated restorative response systems in Central CO, USA. She has developed and taught programs in community conferencing, circle process, trauma-responsive restorative justice, workplace restorative practice, presence and facilitation, and restorative approaches to community and systems change. She is particularly passionate about supporting emerging and developing programs in building restoratively shaped systems and organizational cultures—structures that center voice and collaboration and align internal practices with restorative justice values and principles.

Her international work has included engagement with the European Forum for Restorative Justice, including presentations and on-the-ground interviews with practitioners and participants at the Forum's 2023 Symposium in Pamplona, Spain. In November 2026, she will present “The Unseen Ripple Effect Beyond the Sentence” at the Restorative Justice Council's conference, Restorative Justice in a Time of Fractured Systems, examining the impacts of incarceration on children and families and possibilities for restorative responses.

Molly's writing has appeared in Truthout, DailyGood, HuffPost, and Medium, as well as in academic publications including Oxford's Current Debates in Peace and Conflict Studies. She is also a contributor to Bloomsbury's forthcoming encyclopedia. She has taught and presented in university, community, and professional settings and was named a 2025 Salzburg Global Fellow.

Molly is currently pursuing her Master's in Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, where she serves as a Graduate Assistant with the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice. Her current scholarship explores the impacts of parental incarceration on children and families, restorative responses to workplace and organizational harm, and the role of relational presence within restorative practice.

Her work is informed by close to two decades in the restorative justice field, sustained relationships with practitioners and scholars across the field, and lived experience of the far-reaching impacts of incarceration on families. At the heart of her work is an understanding of restorative justice not simply as a set of processes, but as a relational practice and way of being—and a commitment to helping organizations build structures that embody the same restorative values they seek to bring into the world.

Molly R. Leach, Scholar/Practitioner Website

Founder and Director of Restorative Justice on The Rise (RJOTR), restorative justice practitioner, educator, facilitator, author, and program-development consultant. Former Executive Director of a Colorado community conferencing program and Restorative Justice Fellow with The Peace Alliance. Current Master's in Restorative Justice student at EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and Graduate Assistant with the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice. My work focuses on community conferencing, circles, trauma-responsive practice, organizational and workplace RJ, impacts of incarceration on families, relational presence, and helping programs build systems and cultures that embody restorative values through voice, collaboration, shared power, and meaningful participation.