robert (“roman”) haferd, esq.

Robert (“Roman”) Haferd, Esq. is a restorative justice practitioner, civil rights attorney, organizer and innovator. He has focused his career on advocating and building capacity with marginalized families.

Currently, Mr. Haferd serves as the Restorative Justice Coordinator for the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, where he has helped build a first-of-its-kind restorative justice program inside Washington D.C.’s justice department. In this role he is the team’s primary point of contact with justice system officials, speaks regularly on restorative justice to jurisdictions and audiences around the country, while also facilitating a full caseload of restorative justice conferences referred by local prosecutors and other community partners in the District.

Mr. Haferd earned his JD at Harvard Law School, represented juvenile and adult defendants in the Boston Municipal and Juvenile Courts through the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute, interned at the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa, and served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. After law school, Mr. Haferd served as a law clerk for the Hon. Algenon L. Marbley, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio. After clerking, he worked in the Washington, D.C. office of WilmerHale LLP as a litigation associate. In his private legal practice, Mr. Haferd has represented plaintiffs in cases in numerous federal and state jurisdictions involving deprivations of Constitutional rights. Mr. Haferd has also advised entrepreneurs and organizations in their entity and partnership creation, compliance, and agreements.

Mr. Haferd is co-founder and managing member of Catharsis on the Mall, a nonprofit arts and advocacy community dedicated to facilitating community artistic expression in public spaces and demonstrations. Mr. Haferd is the founding Director of Community Affairs for the Plant Medicine Coalition and also recently joined the board of Activate Labs, a peacebuilding incubator and nonprofit.

Mr. Haferd has been a featured speaker on restorative justice at the National Association of Attorneys General, the United States Institute of Peace, the American Bar Association, the National Law Enforcement Museum, the John Jay College of Law, the University of the District of Columbia School of Law, the Eastern Mennonite University Summer Peacebuilding Institute, and the Burning Man Project.

Mr. Haferd is a native of Akron, Ohio, with roots and relatives in the farming trade across the mid-Ohio region.