I’m Shira. I’m a mediator, restorative practice facilitator, organizational consultant, and educator in Rochester, New York, working to support people to experience greater presence, courage, and connection. My pronouns are she/her.

I create spaces—both practical and sacred—where people can return to what’s true, heal what’s been fractured, and imagine new ways of being together. Whether in a living room, a classroom, or a conference room, I help people embody truth-telling as the foundation for our relationships and our lives.

This site is a home to bring together my personal and professional journey, share my insights and lessons learned, and weave together wisdom from spiritual traditions to brain science - all in service of supporting peacemaking and collective liberation.

My Approach

In my two decades of work with communication and conflict, I have seen so many conflicts boil down to one thing: a sense that people can’t talk freely about the real issues. And yet I have seen firsthand how even the most heated conflicts—whether around workplace harassment, sexual misconduct, racial harm, Palestine/Israel, or any other highly charged topic—can be radically transformed once people are given the space and support to speak their truth from a place of empowerment, safety, and connection.

My work weaves together 20+ years of community-based leadership with a deep spiritual practice rooted in listening, ritual, and collective transformation. Through the use of restorative, mindful, and trauma-informed practices, I work to create spaces that promote safety, respect, and dignity, and that turn silence into storytelling, resentment into curiosity, and harm into healing and repair.

I’m passionate about creating workplace cultures that are life-affirming and connecting, where people experience a sense of respect, equity, inclusion, and belonging. My collaborations with schools, universities, businesses, and nonprofit organizations have taught me what research consistently shows: culture change isn’t a quick fix—it’s a journey.

My approach to organizational change enables leaders to create systems of communication and conflict skills that don’t just respond to conflict, they prevent it in the first place. Using evidence-based tools drawn from the science of implementation and behavior change, I have supported teams and organizations to shift their culture—from toxic and chaotic, to healthy and predictable—and to sustain these changes for years to come.