about sujatha

sujatha baliga loves everyone, no exceptions. (Yup, including that person.) Her work is characterized by an equal dedication to crime survivors and people who’ve caused harm. A former victim advocate and public defender, baliga was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship in 2008 which she used to launch a now nation-wide restorative youth diversion program. For her decades of work in conflict transformation and restorative justice, she was named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

During her many years as the Director of the Restorative Justice Project, sujatha helped communities across the nation implement restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention and zero-tolerance school discipline policies. Today, she's dedicated to using this approach to end child sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. sujatha is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences; she speaks publicly and inside prisons about her own experiences as a survivor of child sexual abuse and her path to forgiveness. She is working on her first book, Angry Long Enough, to be published by One World/Penguin Random House in 2026.

sujatha earned her A.B. from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and has held two federal district court clerkships. Her personal and research interests include the forgiveness of seemingly unforgivable acts and Buddhist notions of conflict transformation.

sujatha’s faith journey undergirds her justice work. A long-time Buddhist practitioner, she’s a lay member of the Gyuto Foundation, a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Richmond, CA, where she leads meditation on Monday nights. She makes her home in Berkeley, CA, with her partner of 28 years, Jason, and their 19-year-old child, Sathya.