Founder

Linda G. Mills, PhD, JD, MSW

founder

Dr. Linda G. Mills is the 17th President of NYU. She is also the Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law. In 2004, she founded the Center on Violence and Recovery (CVR). Influenced in part by personal experiences, Dr. Mills has been working on issues related to violence and recovery for more than 20 years. Her theory and research on trauma and recovery challenge traditional boundaries and explore the importance of memory in our everyday lives. The focus of her research ranges from domestic violence to genocide studies. Dr. Mills is also a filmmaker, she was the Co-Writer, Co-Director, and Co-Producer of Auf Wiedersehen, ‘Til We Meet Again (2007), the Director of Of Many (2014) and the Director of Better to Live (2015).

Dr. Mills has been published by Princeton University Press, Basic Books, and Cornell and Harvard Law Reviews, and in USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. She has been a blogger for Psychology Today and has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, People, Harper’s & Queen, and Glamour. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense. She has also appeared twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show, among other television appearances, including The O’Reilly Factor. 

Team

Briana Barocas, PhD

research professor & SENIOR director of research and SCHOLARSHIP

Dr. Briana Barocas oversees CVR’s research initiatives and scholarship and is also a Research Professor at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work. She has taught at the Stern School of Business and the Silver School of Social Work. Her interests in trauma, resiliency, and recovery have led to research on first responders, individuals and families affected by domestic violence, and survivors of 9/11. Her research has been supported by the National Institute of Justice, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense. She has two decades of experience in restorative justice applications to domestic violence crimes in communities across the United States and currently serves as a member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice’s Working Group on Gender-Based Violence and Restorative Justice.  

She was the Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps) team to develop an online platform for domestic violence treatment. She participated in the 2011 Faculty Fellowship Summer Institute in Israel co-sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. For the 2010-2011 academic year, she was a fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association. In 2007, she was selected to participate in the Disaster Mental Health Research Mentoring Program, a two-year program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, in which she focused on disaster mental health in workplace settings.

Previously, Dr. Barocas was a consultant and researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Social Policy and Practice in the Workplace. She was the former Assistant Director of Cornell University’s Institute for Women and Work. Her earlier research on work-family issues and current work on the response to and recovery from violence and trauma have strengthened her commitment to developing and researching programs and services that better the lives of individuals, families, and communities. She has presented at national and international conferences and published in Criminal Justice and Behavior, International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, Journal of Experimental Criminology, Journal of Family Violence, Nature Human Behaviour, Partner Abuse, Social Work with Groups, as well as International Terrorism and Threats to Security: Managerial and Organizational Challenges, Stress in Policing: Sources, Consequences and Interventions, and Gender and Domestic Violence: Contemporary Legal Practice and Intervention Reforms. She holds a PhD in Social Policy, Planning, and Policy Analysis from Columbia University, an MSc in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BS in Human Development and Family Studies from Cornell University. Contact Dr. Barocas at briana.barocas@nyu.edu. 

Hasaani M. Hylton, BS

Director of Training and Technical Assistance

Hasaani Hylton, a Nationally Certified Restorative Justice Trainer, has dedicated her career to developing other professionals through training facilitation, implementation strategy, and technical assistance. Targeting a myriad of sectors, primarily in the areas of social services, education, and criminal justice, Ms. Hylton provides a variety of certification training services, including Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ), Restorative Justice Circle Facilitation, Adult and Youth Mental Health First Aid (MHFA and YMHFA), Protective Factors Framework, and more. Some of the recipients of such training services have included: Family Court Social Services Division (CSSD), Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA), Office of Attorney General (OAG), Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), and District of Columbia Public School System (DCPS).

 Ms. Hylton holds a BS degree in Health Systems Management from University of the Potomac. She is currently attending Vermont Law and Graduate School, pursuing an MA in Restorative Justice.

Kate Hardy, BA

Assistant Director of Development and Education

Kate Hardy supports CVR’s vision and leadership team on a range of different administrative functions. Ms. Hardy has lived in countries across the globe, including South Africa, Brazil, and India. She has worked with various non-profit organizations throughout the world, including Water 4 Cape Town and Ashoka. Kate holds a BA from American University in International Relations and Communication.

Krystal McLeod, JD

Executive director

Krystal McLeod is a practitioner and national advocate for using restorative approaches to address the root causes of violence and counteract the harms caused by our punitive criminal legal system. As the newly-appointed Executive Director and Senior Research Scholar of the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery, she leads a multidisciplinary team of practitioners, scholars, researchers, social workers, organizers, activists, artists, and survivors deeply committed to reimagining our nation’s response to violence. 

Ms. McLeod is the Principal Investigator on numerous contracts to provide restorative justice-based training and technical assistance to communities across the country interested in piloting restorative alternatives to address various crimes/harms. She is the Principal Investigator and Project Director on the 2024 Restorative Practices Technical Assistance Pilot Program award from the Department of Justice. CVR was one of only three organizations in the nation recognized with this $2 million award. With the support of the Department of Justice, NYU CVR, under Ms. McLeod’s leadership, will continue to provide training and technical assistance to pilot sites across the country interested in designing and implementing community-based restorative practices programs that address domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. 

In 2022, Ms. McLeod was one of 15 young transformative leaders invited to meet His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharmashala. Ms. McLeod is also the Co-founder of Vanity's Truth LLC, an organization focused on the well-being, of healing, and recovery of black women who have survived and been impacted by violence. Ms. McLeod holds a JD from the University of Notre Dame Law School and a BA in Politics from New York University. She has also been named as a Dalai Lama Fellow, Truman Scholar, Compassionate Leadership Fellow, and Senior Humanity in Action Fellow.

Fellows

Hila Avieli, PhD, MSW

FELLOW

Dr. Hila Avieli was a visiting scholar at CVR for the 2019-2020 academic year. She is a is a researcher and a lecturer in the Department of Criminology at Ariel University, Israel. Her research interests are domestic violence, elder abuse, criminology and aging, and disability studies.

Dr. Avieli has both a PhD in Criminology and an MSW which enabled her to acquire field experience as a clinical social worker in a prison psychiatric ward. She is a member of the Israeli Criminological Association and serves as an official reviewer of Israeli prisons. In addition, Dr. Avieli taught at the School of Criminology at Haifa University and is currently a member of the Minerva Center on Intersectionality in Aging.       

Rei Shimizu, PhD, MSW

FELLOW

Dr. Rei Shimizu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Social Work and a prior graduate research assistant at CVR. Her research interests include domestic violence intervention research, the intersections of domestic violence intervention and domestic/international policies, violence resolution, trauma recovery, and the unique role of food and food behaviors in domestic violence and intimate partner violence. She served as a research assistant at Children’s Rainbow Center in Japan, focusing on child abuse and familial suicide and funded by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Dr. Shimizu was also a Women’s Initiative for Summer Empowerment Fellow in 2016 at the Japan Institute of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, advocating for mental health awareness in Japan. She holds a PhD from NYU’s Silver School of Social Work and an MSW from Columbia University.

Sejung Yang, PhD, MSW

FELLOW

Dr. Sejung Yang is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Restorative Justice Research Community at the University of Vermont and a prior graduate research assistant at CVR. She hopes her research contributes to enhancing the well-being of children, youth, and parents exposed to family violence. Her clinical experience at the Community Child Center in South Korea largely informed her research interest in the intergenerational transmission of violence. She is committed to conducting research that addresses the cycle of violence and advances restorative justice. She has co-authored several peer-reviewed articles on child maltreatment and violence in journals, including Child and Adolescent Social Work and Journal of Family Issues. She holds a PhD from NYU’s Silver School of Social Work and an MSW from Yonsei University in South Korea.

Research Assistants

Layla Al Neyadi, MA, MPH

graduate research assistant

Layla Al Neyadi is an PhD student at NYU's Silver School of Social Work. Her research interests focus on the intersection between mental health and public policy, with an emphasis on identifying how policies may foster mental health and wellbeing, and investigating the sociocultural determinants of health that may exacerbate, or protect against, the development of mental illness. Layla was a member of NYU Abu Dhabi’s inaugural class, where she studied Psychology. After graduation, she served as Assistant Director for NYU Abu Dhabi’s Residential Education department, during which time she supported students living on campus by providing training, programming, and collaborating across departments in an effort to align the university’s crisis response protocol. Layla was subsequently awarded His Highness the President of the UAE’s Distinguished Students Scholarship to pursue an MA in Clinical Psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College. She also holds an MPH with a concentration in Public Health Policy and Management from NYU's School of Global Public Health. Her current studies at NYU are further preparing her to make a meaningful contribution to her home country by applying best practices to the unique context of the UAE.

Krushika Uday Patankar, MSW

graduate research assistant

Krushika Uday Patankar is a PhD student at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work. Her research interests lie at the intersection of women's migration, mental health and trauma, and experiences of family separation and divorce. She is particularly interested in intervention development that harness traditional and cultural practices for mental health and trauma care with migrant women. Krushika has served as a longstanding communal support and educator for local, migrant, and expatriate children with developmental disorders in her hometown of Muscat, Oman, and pioneered a peer support program for communal mental health treatment at NYU Abu Dhabi in 2014. Krushika is a research coordinator on a National Institutes of Health grant focused on creating interventions for migrant and refugee families and has co-authored a publication featured in Community Mental Health Journal on social networks, community integration and recovery with adults with serious mental illness in India and the US. She holds an MSW from New York University and a BA from New York University Abu Dhabi.

Lucy Prout, MCJ

graduate research assistant

Lucy Prout is a first-year PhD Student at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work. Both personal, academic, and research experiences have led Lucy to witness the limitations and violence of formal systems to address intimate partner violence, leading her to pursue research questions addressing justice and healing beyond the criminal legal system. Interested in anti-racist, community-driven research methods, Lucy’s focus includes investigating responses to intimate partner violence through non-carceral avenues with a particular focus on restorative justice tools and how this can grow through transformative justice. Previously, Lucy facilitated restorative justice processes in Colorado through the Denver District Attorney’s Office, Boulder County Probation Department, and Boulder County Sheriff's Department. She also worked to create a restorative, community-based program for those directly impacted by intimate partner violence. Previous research includes evaluating a harm-reduction program to address the intersection of substance use and incarceration in addition to civilian oversight of police. She received her MA in Criminal Justice with a Concentration in Gender Based Violence from the University of Colorado Denver and her BA in Justice and Peace Studies with a Women and Gender Studies minor from Georgetown University.