Rev. Dr. Samantha Wilson

Biography

Rev. Dr. Samantha Lynne Wilson is a Unitarian Universalist minister, community psychologist, and restorative practitioner. She works as a UUA Conflict Engagement Coach as well as a restorative practitioner in private practice, partnering directly with congregations and communities navigating misconduct, conflict, and harm in crisis, as well as short-term and multi-year processes. She facilitates in collaboration with grassroots restorative justice organizations focused on community-based approaches to sexual and violent harms, such as the Oakland-based Ahimsa Collective and Richmond-based Collective Healing and Transformation (CHAT) Project. Samantha brings over a decade of direct experience in conflict engagement and restorative justice facilitation, having served as a facilitator to individuals, families, schools, congregations, and coalitions, as well as in prisons, through victim-offender dialogues, and as part of justice movements.

Samantha’s doctoral research in Community Psychology focuses on organizational culture-building and the practices of organizations and movements designing for and embodying a specific way of being, particularly organizations at the intersections of personal transformation and political action. Her theoretical work examines identity development theory from the perspective of interdependent selves-in-relation, and the psychological and social implications of these identities of interdependence for community culture-building and movement making in organizations and congregations.