Restorative Practices

Restorative practices are skills, strategies, and frameworks that help us form, strengthen, and mend our relationships with one another.

When harm, conflict, or misunderstandings happen — which are a normal, natural, and inevitable part of our human experience — meaningful repair is more likely where there is a foundation of trust and understanding.

At Yale, we’re taking an interdisciplinary, evidence-based approach to Restorative Practices, drawing from many fields of study and learning, including conflict and peace studies; communication studies; the cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences; and Native wisdom and teachings.

We enlist restorative practices proactively to build stronger individual, interpersonal, and group connections, and responsively to address conflict or harm, where there’s been a rupture or break in a relationship.

Restorative Practices offers training, consultation, coaching, and some direct facilitation.

three colored dots in a horizontal row, orange, red and blue

Meet Our Team

Aley Menon

Aley is the university’s inaugural Director of Restorative Practices. Since September of 2023, she has been guiding institutional strategy and campus-wide implementation efforts in Restorative Practices. Before this role, Aley spent over a decade overseeing the university’s formal and alternative processes for resolving formal complaints of sexual misconduct. An attorney by training, Aley has also spent time in Yale’s Office of the General Counsel on student affairs and employment matters. Prior to joining Yale, she served as the University of Miami’s Ombudsperson for ten years and directed UM’s Multicultural Affairs Office for three years. Aley is originally from Kerala, India.

Erica Adarkwa

Erica is the Assistant Director of Restorative Practices. Erica is a Black feminist care-worker who is passionate about building and contributing to visions of care that center our wholeness and dignity. Prior to joining Restorative Practices, she served as a Chaplain Associate at Yale and supported students across the university as they made connections between their values and practice. She is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and Brown University.

Amber Cunningham

Amber is the Restorative Practices Project Coordinator. Amber’s academic background is in writing, literature, and publishing, and she has previously held creative positions in the marketing field. Her most recent position before joining Restorative Practices was as a Senior Administrative Assistant in Yale College.