Biography of Lorenn Walker

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Lorenn Walker is a Hawai'i based public health educator and restorative lawyer, who provides training for organizations and groups, and speaks to a wide range of audiences.

Lorenn's work focuses on building relationships and increasing individual and organizational performance. She designs, implements, researches, writes and publishes on a variety of innovative programs for violence prevention and promoting resiliency. She has a special interest in disenfranchised groups including foster and homeless youth, crime victims, incarcerated people and the loved ones of all affected.

Phil Zimbardo, Sanford University prison experiment principal, and author of The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil, says Lorenn’s "work is wonderful." John Braithwaite, the world’s most cited restorative justice scholar, and author of Crime, Shame & Reintegration says that Lorenn "is one of the best trained, most experienced and most sophisticated restorative justice practitioners in the world." In addition to developing, researching, writing, and training others on public health and restorative interventions, Lorenn is a hands-on practitioner who also implements projects. Her unique background enables her to reach out to both victims and perpetrators of crime, and to anyone facing difficulties.

Lorenn lived on her own when she was 14 years old, dropped out of high school at 15, was adjudicated as a juvenile offender at 16, was a teen parent, and seriously injured in an assault, but she put herself through law school in her 20s, practiced law both defending and prosecuting some cases through her 30s. She left mainstream lawyering at age 42 and earned a masters degree in health education.

Lorenn is a restorative lawyer and a recovering litigator. From 1984 to 1994 she was a Hawai'i state deputy attorney general and defended state agencies and employees including the welfare and prison systems. She also prosecuted people and organizations for fraud. From 1994 to 1999 she defended indigent children and adults charged with crimes and child abuse in family court. In 1998 and 1999 she was the President of the Child & Family Advocacy Section of the Hawai’i State Bar Association

A life-long surfer, former champion windsurfer, a triathlete, wife, mother of three children, and grandmother to three, Lorenn is living proof of how to transform conflict into resiliency, and how to age with strength.

Since 1999, Lorenn has competed in the Xterra World Championships, a rugged off-road triathlon held on Maui. 2013 marks her 15th year competing in the race. In 2002 and 2003 she competed in the Kona Ironman Triathlon World Championships. Within a week of the Kona races, she competed in the Xterra World Championships. She is the first woman over 40 to do both grueling races, The Double, in the same week. In 1999, at the age of 47, Lorenn was the Hawai'i State Woman's Windsurfing Champion. She has been sponsored for athletic performances for many years.

Lorenn has been a lecturer for the University of Hawai'i since 1994. She has taught thousands of students communication skills through personal and public speaking courses for over 13 years. She has also taught ethics, business, labor, and criminal law courses. Many of her public speaking students have been their college class speakers at graduation. She brings a Montessori - hands on learning approach to her courses and trainings.

In her late teens and early twenties, Lorenn was a Montessori preschool and kindergarten teacher in Santa Cruz, California. She became the school director when she was 22 years old. In 1975 she moved to Hawai'i where her grandparents and father lived in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1971 Lorenn earned a Montessori Teaching Certificate from St. Nicholas Montessori Teacher Training Centre, London, by correspondence; in 1980 a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of Hawai'i, Manoa; in 1983 a juris doctorate degree from Northeastern University School of Law, Boston; in 1996 a masters degree in health education from the University of Hawai'i School of Public Health, Manoa. She was mentored by Insoo Kim Berg in solution-focused approaches and has completed numerous trainings in solution-focused brief therapy. Lorenn is a life long learning constantly looking for ways to improve her work and understand peacemaking skills.

Lorenn frequently speaks on health issues and conflict management, and has been interviewed by newspapers, television and radio numerous times. She is the author of several books and numerous articles.

She is married and the parent of one daughter and two sons - she lives with her husband and one son on the North Shore of O'ahu, a mile and a half down the beach from her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren. She frequently skateboards and surfs with her grandchildren.

To contact Lorenn, please call (808) 218-3712 or email her: lorenn@hawaii.edu