Jodie Geddes and Tom DeWolf serve as co-managers of Coming to the Table, which was
founded in 2006 on the campus of EMU utilizing principles highlighted in the teachings
through the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding: Restorative Justice, Strategies for
Trauma Awareness & Resilience, Circle Process, and more. This webinar will focus on
the importance of utilizing RJ practices in racial justice & healing work as practiced
by Coming to the Table, which has 45 local affiliate groups in 19 states and close
to 6,000 individual members working to Take America Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement (TABLE).
Guest Bios
Jodie Geddes - Jodie was born in Jamaica, West Indies and migrated to the United States at the
age of 6. Through her experiences as a Caribbean-American immigrant Jodie found herself
pushing to have deeper and more intersectional conversations about race, justice,
truth telling and healing. As a community organizer, writer, and restorative justice
healer Jodie seeks to be a home where young people and elders can learn together and
create collective community responses to the transformative healing of historical
harms built in the legacy and history of slavery. Jodie earned an M.A. in Conflict
Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University and has had numerous articles published
on mass incarceration and racism. Click here to read more. Jodie is co-author of The Little Book of Racial Healing.
Tom DeWolf - Tom DeWolf has been involved with CTTT since the first gathering at Eastern Mennonite University
(EMU) in January 2006. Tom is a trained STAR Practitioner, and has taken classes in Restorative Justice, Transformative Theater, Media for
Societal Transformation, Building Restorative Organizations, and Circle Processes
at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute through the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding at EMU. Tom is the author of Inheriting the Trade (Beacon Press, 2008), the story of his experiences in the making of the Emmy-nominated,
PBS documentary, Traces of the Trade, co-author, with Sharon Leslie Morgan, of Gather at the Table (Beacon Press, 2012), and co-author, with Jodie Geddes, of The Little Book of Racial Healing (Skyhorse, 2019). Tom is also a public speaker and workshop facilitator at universities,
corporations, and conferences throughout the United States.
