Lauren Trout is a Senior Program Associate for the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team and leads WestEd’s restorative practices body of work. Trout works with schools, communities, and larger education and justice systems to provide training, coaching, and technical support. Trout’s work centers on equity and focuses on climate and culture, harm prevention, sustainable implementation, and community-driven change.
As a restorative justice practitioner, Trout’s work aims to shift trauma-informed practice, social-emotional well-being, and relationship-centered learning from being siloed programs into being paradigms, collective values, and guiding principles that inform and are embedded in structures and organizational culture. Trout specializes in using a restorative justice paradigm and constructivist and critical pedagogies to transform systems of power, helping create inclusive, safe, and culturally responsive climates.
Prior to joining WestEd, Trout ran restorative justice programs for the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office and Public School System in Louisiana. There, Trout led restorative work in the Parish, facilitated victim-offender dialogues as an alternative to court, and oversaw the implementation of restorative practices for the school district. As a trainer, facilitator, speaker, and consultant with over a decade of direct work with youth, communities, and systems, Trout has experience spanning local and national levels of education and criminal justice systems.
Trout received a BA in political science and international studies from Saint Louis University, and is a native southerner currently residing in New Orleans, Louisiana.