Leo Hylton

Leo Hylton (he/him) helps organizational leaders build deeper trust, accountability, and community within their teams and trains them to design and implement conflict transformation pathways from a restorative justice ethos. He is a PhD student at the George Mason University Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, leading healing-centered research at the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation. Leo is also currently incarcerated in Maine State Prison. 

His education and work are based in trauma-informed, healing-centered restorative justice practices, with a vision toward an abolitionist future. He has worked with Think Peace as a restorative justice consultant in support of transitional justice work, toward truth telling, racial healing, and reconciliation; and was a visiting instructor at Colby College, co-teaching “Carcerality and Abolition.” 

He was a lead facilitator of Maine State Prison’s Restorative Practices Steering Committee, served on Colby College’s Restorative Practices Team, and provides consultation to restorative justice practitioners in the US and abroad. Leo is a core organizer of the Carter School Working Group on Forgiveness and Reconciliation, which creates spaces of co-learning, growth, and trauma healing in the context of forgiveness and reconciliation. He is also a columnist for The Bollard (formerly Mainer), where he writes a monthly column called Shining Light on Humanity.