7:30–8:15 – Breakfast

8:15–8:30 – Opening Remarks by

8:30–9:15 – Opening Keynote

• ➜Compassion From The Bench: Re-imagining Courtroom Practices in an Era of Collective Harm (Presented by The BC Law Foundation) – Justice Jasmine Akbarali of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice | Stanley Park Ballroom
  Justice Jasmine Akbarali (she/her) earned a BA in French from McMaster University (1991) and graduated as gold medalist from the University of Windsor Law School (1995). She clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada, was called to the Ontario Bar (1997), and practiced as a partner at Lerners LLP focusing on appeals and pro bono work. 
   
  Known for her compassionate approach, as in the 2024 Ukraine Airlines decision adapting processes to minimize trauma, she served as Vice President of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and on the George Hull Centre board before her 2016 Superior Court appointment. This session explores re-imagining courtroom practices. 
  

9:20–10:30 – Integration Workshops

• ➜Access, Safety, Dignity: An Integrated Advocacy Approach for Trans and Refugee Justice – Deem Tattan
  Deem Tattan (they/them) is a third-culture transmasculine queer refugee indigenous to the Levant. A community builder and advocate based in Tkaronto, Deem centres Queer & Trans SWANA refugees who are systematically erased from justice and advocacy talks. They will unpack resettlement challenges, rethinking and analyzing them through an intersectional trauma-informed and culturally sensitive practice of care, building capacity for advocacy rooted in self-determination and abolitionist futures. 
  

• ➜Practicing Love: Lawyering Toward Liberation – Sarah Katz, Esq. & Corey Best
  Coming Soon

• 
  ➜Before I Go – Medical Assistance in Dying – Marion Brown & Danielle Wilson-Brown | Cypress Room

• Indigenous filmmakers Marion Brown (Gitxaała, award-winning blending storytelling/governance/healing) and daughter Danielle Wilson-Brown (Gitxaała/Haisla writer, mental health worker) share their podcast/film Before I Go exploring MAiD through Gitxsan/Haisla end-of-life frameworks. 

• ➜Radical Hope in Racial Trauma Care: Culturally Responsive Healing as Resistance – Ashley McGirt | Cypress Room

• What does it mean to practice hope while confronting racial trauma and systemic injustice?

  In this interactive workshop, Ashley explores how culturally responsive, trauma-informed care can cultivate radical hope amid racial trauma and oppression, not as passive optimism, but as committed, collective action. Participants will examine how silence, stigma, and structural inequities shape mental health outcomes, and how healing work can become a form of resistance.

  Through storytelling, guided reflection, and dialogue, attendees will gain practical frameworks for sustaining action, building care where systems have failed, supporting collective healing, and leading with equity, courage, and cultural humility.
   

10:30 – Break

10:45–12:15 – Keynote + Q&A

• ➜Somatic Liberation: Dismantling White Body Supremacy – Dr. Resmaa Menakem

• Dr. Resmaa Menakem (he/him, MSW, LICSW, SEP) returns to the Summit. A  therapist, bestselling author of My Grandmother’s Hands, and founder of Justice  Leadership Solutions, he specializes in communal healing and cultural somatics. 
   
  This keynote confronts white body supremacy's effects on all bodies through  historical trauma, institutions, and cultural norms, offering somatic deas to heal,  build resilience, and create anti-racist cultural containers from individual to  collective levels. 

12:15–1:15 – Lunch

1:15–2:45 – Keynote

• ➜What Neuroscience Teaches Us About Trauma, Hope & Humanity + Fireside Chat – Dr. Kemia Sarraf | Moderated by Myrna McCallum | Stanley Park Ballroom
  In this keynote, Dr. Sarraf names what justice professionals have long known in their bodies – that cumulative traumatic stress, moral injury, and systemic dysfunction don't just exhaust capacity, they erode the neural architecture that makes connection, discernment, and healing possible. Hope sparks when we believe we can take meaningful action and do. It becomes a discipline – a muscle flexed in the tradition of what Viktor Frankl called tragic optimism: the capacity to witness the darkest expressions of human suffering while simultaneously holding beauty, meaning, and the possibility of repair. Traumatic stress exposure is inevitable. The harm that results is not. And hope lives here: we are the intervention.

2:45 – Break

3:00–3:30 – Spotlight Speaker Series

• ➜From Where I Stand: A Survivor’s Perspective on Restorative Justice – Amanda Carrasco
  Amanda Carrasco (she/her), with four master's degrees (two in law), volunteer In House Legal Counsel for a non-profit in California that provides mentor services for justice involved youth, articling student at Geldert Law,  and author of Becoming the Brave One: My Journey to Justice. A registered victim of familial homicide and multiple sexual assaults who experienced restorative justice firsthand. She advocates its transformative power even in serious cases, scoring 8/10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences scale, yet thriving. 

• Attendees hear her perspective on the RJ process: challenges.

• ➜Restoring My Spirit: A Police Officer’s Story of Moral Injury and Return to Self – Sgt. Charmaine Parenteau
  Sgt. Charmaine Parenteau will share her personal journey as an Indigenous woman in policing. A story of courage, loss, and the quiet strength it takes to return back to yourself, back to the circle. For 22 years, Charmaine served her community while carrying the hidden weight of fear, shame, PTSD, depression, moral injury, discrimination, and constant pressure to conform. In this intimate talk, she opens her heart about the breaking points, the numbness, and her journey through silence and stillness finding her authentic self, where she meets herself with love.  
   

  Through stillness, connection to land, ceremony, and Indigenous teachings, she reclaimed her spirit, found her voice, and learned what it truly means to live in alignment with her values and identity. 
   This talk is for anyone seeking hope, resilience, and a reminder that healing is possible, even after deep trauma and moral wounds.  

• Come to listen, reflect, engage and leave inspired to honor your own spirit.

• ➜Psychological Safety is a Relationship: Rethinking Workplace Conflict, Trust, and Accountability – Myrna McCallum

• This session explores psychological safety through a relational lens, drawing on trauma-informed practice and Indigenous understandings of what it means to be in good relationship with one another. Participants will learn how fear, hierarchy, unresolved conflict, and unaddressed harm undermine trust and silence people in workplace environments. The session will challenge common assumptions about psychological safety and offer practical insights for leaders, investigators, and decision-makers responsible for navigating complex workplace dynamics. 

  Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the relational conditions required to build trust, accountability, and genuine psychological safety at work.
  

• ➜Justice that Heals, Rehabilitation, Reintegration & Second Chances – Lance Ryan | Cypress Room

• "The system doesn't grant second chances. It just stops actively punishing you. A true second chance is a relational intervention, not an administrative one." 

There is a persistent fiction that the justice system "grants" second chances. In reality, the system is designed to manage risk, not cultivate human potential. In this session, I challenge the conventional narrative of rehabilitation by sharing the pūrākau of true reintegration. Drawing on the profound difference between institutional processing and genuine relational intervention, this talk explores how meaningful second chances are rarely born from systemic mechanisms. Instead, they are built through community, mentorship, and human connection. 

3:35–4:50 – Strategy Workshops

• ➜Navigating Civil Justice after Sexual Violence: A Guide for Survivors and their Advocates –Morgyn Chandler

• Morgyn Chandler (she/her), managing partner at Hammerco Lawyers (Vancouver/Comox/Cowichan), represents sexual violence survivors in civil claims. Founder of Sexual Abuse Lawyers Alliance (SALA) and author of Still Rising: A Handbook of Legal Options for Survivors of Sexual Violence, she centers trauma-informed advocacy. 
   She highlights survivors’ rights, demystifies civil processes as alternatives to criminal paths, and offers empowerment insights. 
  

• ➜Integrating Racial Justice with Indigenous Liberation Frameworks – Myrna McCallum

• Myrna (she/her), Cree-Métis lawyer and creator of Justice as Trauma Summit and The Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast, integrates empathy, dignity, and emotional intelligence into legal work via retreats and culturally responsive practices rooted in Indigenous wisdom. 
  Attendees learn how trauma affects individuals/communities/systems, advocating relational healing over conventional methods.

• ➜The Tension Between Surviving Oppressive Systems and Imagining Liberatory Alternatives” – Isibor Oaikhinan

• Isibor Aigbe Oaikhinan is a Nigerian-trained lawyer and Legal Officer at the Central Bank of Nigeria. He brings experience in public policy, pro bono advocacy, and mental health initiatives, engaging critically with carceral and capitalist systems while advancing healing-centered alternatives. He serves as Chair of the ABA International Law Section Refugee Committee. 
   
  In this session, he explores the tension between surviving oppressive systems and imagining liberatory futures, centering pathways toward repair, justice, and community transformation. 
  

• ➜Building Solidarity Across Borders: Deconstructing Legacies of Colonialism – Ally Hrbachek & Mariana Trujillo-Lezama | Cypress Room

• This workshop examines how colonialism’s core logics continue to shape everyday life, influencing our relationships, institutions, and ways of knowing. We will consider how these structures manifest in subtle, lived forms and explore practices that reorient us toward reciprocity, and collective care.

  Grounded in Indigenous continuance, Through guided dialogue and imaginative inquiry, participants are invited to move from analysis to possibility softening the borders within and around us to make space for connection, responsibility, and hope.

5:00 – End of Day 2