Claire de Mézerville López welcomes Shelley Jones-Holt, Ed.D., to the Restorative Works! Podcast, World Conference series. This series of conversations were held during the 2023 IIRP World Conference, Building Thriving Communities: A Radical Approach Through Restorative Practices, held in Detroit, MI, October 2-4, 2023.

Dr. Shelley shares with us how to have courageous conversations around race and other complex topics by first creating a safe space for those conversations to occur. She emphasizes the importance of preparation by establishing norms and agreements before opening a dialogue and defining terms so that participants can share a common language. Dr. Shelley addresses the natural feeling of shame that can arise when we are faced with things we lack, may they be knowledge, experience, or depth of understanding. She also speaks about how to navigate the emotions that follow a shame response, emphasizing that they should never be barriers to creating and coming to a place of understanding.

Dr. Shelley currently serves as a Courageous Leadership Consultant providing training, facilitation, coaching, and support to equity driven teams and organizational, legislative, educational and family leaders across the nation. She is the founder of Leadership Legacy Consulting, LLC, and the visionary behind the non-profit Family Legacy 5, which focuses on providing structural, adaptive and technical support to educational, corporate and family leaders. Her emphasis on a restorative approach is foundational to engaging in uncomfortable conversations about controversial topics, such as race and identity oppression. The expansion to empower families through family leadership training for all was birthed through the realization that the mentals models that drive systemic change originate not at school or work, but at home.

Tune in to learn more about Dr. Shelley’s approach to addressing hard conversations with care and humility and check out Family Legacy 5 and Leadership Legacy Consulting.