Monique

Monique switched careers in 2019 from a phlebotomist to a community advocate. In less than three years, Monique’s dynamic leadership has skyrocketed her to directly influence the entire criminal legal system in Harris County and innovate national best practices. Her community leadership began at Grassroots Leadership’s program, Texas Advocates for Justice, by helping them establish their core mission of “Care not Cages,” recruiting directly impacted community members and empowering them to effectively organize for change. Her heart and passion became committed to learning restorative justice practices through healing circles. She was invited to lead Restoring Justice’s Board of Directors through a healing circle so that they could honor their stated long-term goals of changing our system from punitive to restorative - if they claimed that change she knew they needed to practice it with their leadership first. That session embedded an organization-wide commitment to healing circle practice and began a path for her to be hired full-time. 

She was Restoring Justice’s first Client Advocate, a nationally innovative role that required her to break ground. An organization in California created a framework for this role to support public defenders, but their theory hired Ivy-league undergraduates traveling to new cities to help with resource connection. As seen on the ground in Harris County, this theory does not always fix the paternalistic mindsets that social work training favors that can degrade client-centered practices, which was a primary reason the Client Advocate model was created. Monique has forged the new solution - directly-impacted & community-based Client Advocates. She has shown that local and cultural knowledge is vital for success in open communication and trust-building - the foundations of client-centered public defense. 

She now leads Restoring Justice’s service provision alongside the attorneys for clients as the Holistic Services Director, finding long-term service partnerships and educating our community on a daily basis. She continues to revolutionize our system through the long-road of building healing circle practices and awareness. In November 2022, Restoring Justice led a conference through the University of Houston Honors College funded by the Elizabeth D. Rockwell Center on Ethics and Leadership. Monique’s leadership was by far the shining influence of humanity and our people-centered work. Every attendee and leader was awe-struck by the workshop and circle practices that she put together, convincing the EDR Center to make restorative justice their entire theme for 2023-2024 school year. Monique’s insight is often sought after by Harris County’s leadership as well. In one tangible example in 2021, she was asked to be a voting member of the hiring committee for the Executive Director of the brand new Office of Managed Assigned Counsel for Harris County. It is only the fourth office of its kind in Texas and oversees training, resources, selection, and quality-control of private appointed attorneys to misdemeanors. A serious conflict arose between status-quo preservers and people desiring change on the committee. Monique’s voice for what the people needed swayed the final vote to ensure client-centered values would be honored with the hire. 

Monique achieves these lofty accomplishments while juggling her every day client support - calls for desperate resources, mental health crises, homelessness prevention, employment opportunities, clothing & food provision, transportation needs, counseling oversight, and just daily friendship and relation support to all our clients and team. She has even initiated a new partnership with a statewide leader for change called Via Hope, placing Peer Navigators into our portfolio of innovative holistic service provision, which will require even more trailblazing in April 2023 as she navigates management of prior clients as contractors under her supervision, alongside hopeful new Client Advocate hires, pending funding availability. None of us could do this work without her. She is the heartbeat of Restoring Justice. She succeeds at all these innovative measures while raising three kids by herself.

The most critical component of her power that demands respect is that she does this work as a directly impacted person herself - her husband has been wrongfully convicted to 48 years prison and is a Restoring Justice client himself. She has even chosen to continue her education as she works toward a new degree in business. Monique Joseph is one of the most important leaders in our country, and through her hope and faith in Jesus Christ, her territory will expand and love will win for the people we are called to serve.