Please visit Living Justice Press for books on Restorative Justice and beyond.
www.livingjusticepress.com

Kay served the Minnesota Department of Corrections in the position of Restorative Justice Planner from 1994 to 2003. In that position she provided education to the criminal justice system, other agencies and the general public about restorative justice. She also assisted groups interested in implementing the principles of restorative justice in their communities through system change and community empowerment. She worked with leaders in corrections, law enforcement, the judiciary, civic organizations, neighborhood groups, faith communities and education to develop a comprehensive response to crime and conflict based on restorative justice.

Kay continues to be active in the field of restorative justice, providing training and technical assistance to national and local initiatives with a special emphasis on the use of peacemaking circles. She has been involved in the development of circle processes in criminal justice, schools, neighborhoods, families and the workplace. She is a co-author of the book Peacemaking Circles: From Crime to Community and author of the Little Book of Circle Processes: A New/Old Approach to Peacemaking. Most recently she is co-author of Doing Democracy - Using Circles for Community Planning.

Kay is an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, Eastern Mennonite University and Southwest Minnesota State University.

Kay has served as a consultant, curriculum writer and trainer for the National Institute of Corrections, the National Institute of Justice, and the Balanced and Restorative Justice Project of the Office for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. She serves on the Board of Reference of the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University and the Board of Directors of Living Justice Press, a non-profit publisher for restorative justice.

From 1988 to 1994 Kay worked for the Minnesota Citizens Council on Crime and Justice in public policy research and advocacy. Kay's background in community activism includes nine years of service on a local school board and three years as chair of the board of the Southern Valley Alliance for Battered Women.

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COUNCIL TOPICS: Restorative Justice and Circles in action; Discovering conflict's gift, and more. Linda is changing the system day by day from within, as an attorney. I am so grateful to her for taking time to share with us insights from the "trenches".

Linda Alvarez's work as an attorney and as a business consultant transforms the way contract negotiation, drafting, and enforcement impact business relationships. Linda facilitates a wide range of transactions and relationships, enabling the parties to design worthwhile, sustainable and enjoyable transactions and relationships, conduct their business and legal affairs with integrity, and establish reliable frameworks for addressing conflict productively.

The Discovering Agreement approach:

Calibrates alignment of the parties' intentions, values, and expectations - allowing them to gauge in advance whether the proposed relationship or transaction will be workable and worthwhile in the long-run;
Aligns content and language in legal contracts with the Vision-Mission-Values of the parties - so that contract terms and provisions harness the power of the conventional legal system to support the parties in conducting business and engaging crisis in accordance with their declared Vision/Mission/Values; and
Produces contracts that function as guidebooks for keeping the enterprise/transaction/relationship on track and productive - by orienting and re-orienting parties towards collaborative, creative responses to unexpected change or disagreement (as opposed to destructive adversarial posturing).

About Linda

The first twenty years of Linda Alvarez's professional life were spent pursuing a successful career in the Arts. Trained in theatre, she and her husband produced and managed theatrical and media productions across the United States. In the mid-1990's Linda reentered the academic world earning her law degree, magna cum laude, in 1997. She entered private practice in the large firm environment - including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (Palo Alto) and Vinson & Elkins (Houston).

Beginning with her engagement as a member of the team successfully defending the first mp3 player to come to market[1], Linda has remained active on the frontier where digital technology pushes the boundaries of legal concepts designed for the analog and print-based era. As Senior Counsel for Litigation and Trademarks at Align Technology, Inc., Linda managed major litigations on behalf of the corporation as well as shepherding the company's valuable consumer trademark portfolio. With the successful conclusion of the litigations in 2005, Linda chose to re-focus her career toward transactional work and launched her solo practice. Linda's Website: www.discoveringagreement.com

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