From personal and communal grief to creating a workplace that works for everybody. In this episode of Restorative Works!, host Claire de Mezerville López welcomes Assistant Commissioner for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, Dr. Iyana Titus, to explore how restorative practices can transform workplace culture and strengthen communities in the largest municipal park system in the nation.
Dr. Titus shares the deeply personal story that led her to restorative practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. While grieving the loss of her father and supporting employees through unprecedented challenges, she experienced her first restorative circle. That moment helped her process grief, reconnect with others, and discover the power of authentic dialogue.
Listen to discover how restorative circles became an essential tool for supporting employees across the Parks Department, from Parks Enforcement Patrol Officers responding to overdose emergencies to supervisors navigating the pressures of seasonal operations. Dr. Titus explains how circles created opportunities for staff to share personal experiences, process difficult emotions, and build stronger relationships across every level of the organization. As interest grew, the department expanded its efforts by training a cohort of circle keepers, embedding restorative practices into leadership development, team retreats, and employee support initiatives.
In her role, Dr. Titus is responsible for creating and implementing the agency's diversity and inclusion strategies, policies, and practices, conducting EEO investigations, and ensuring that the agency complies with all federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws. As an assistant commissioner, she has also been instrumental in facilitating difficult conversations on race relations, religion, international issues, mental health, and a host of other topics. She has created and implemented her agency's first alternative dispute resolution program, which includes mediating employment-related disputes. Recently, she wrote an article entitled "Using Restorative Practices to Create Restorative Park Systems," which was published in the Parks & Recreation Magazine of the National Recreation and Parks Association.
Transcription
Claire de Mezerville López
Hello everybody and welcome to Restorative Works, a podcast where learning, practice, and research open new paths for transformation. My name is Claire de Mezerville López and it is a joy to introduce our guest, Dr. Iyana Titus. Dr. Titus, welcome. How are you today?
Iyana Titus
I am doing well, Claire. Doing well indeed. How are you?
Claire de Mezerville López
I am great. I am looking forward to this conversation, but before getting started, allow me to introduce you to our audience. Iyana Titus currently serves as an assistant commissioner for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for New York City's Parks and Recreation Department, where she is responsible for creating and implementing the agency's diversity and inclusion strategies, policies and practices. She has also been instrumental in facilitating difficult conversations on race relations, religion, international issues, mental health, and a host of other topics. She has created and implemented her agency's first alternative dispute resolution program, and during the pandemic she launched the agency's Restorative Practices Program, which centered on the use of community-building circles among employees. Since then, the initiative has grown to include a cohort of trained circle keepers and the facilitation of circles with senior leaders and students. Mrs. Titus holds a BA from Emory University, a master's degree in comparative labor and organization studies from the University of Amsterdam, where she wrote her thesis on diversity management and the Dutch police, and a JD from Loyola Law School. She is a deacon at her church, and she loves running and traveling. She lives in Harlem with her husband. Iyana, welcome to the podcast. It's so wonderful to have you here. Before getting started, you have a lot of experience around restorative practices. How did that start? What's the origin story of your learning and loving restorative practices?
Iyana Titus
Thank you so much, Claire, for the question. My passion for restorative practices work really started in the pandemic. And I just want to paint a picture for you. At the time of the pandemic, especially at the start, my father was actually very ill. So, I was moved from New York to Georgia to really try to take care of him. He ends up dying fairly quickly once I get to Georgia. And then all of a sudden there's this pandemic, and people are nervous about New York City and all the things that are happening there. You read my bio and so you know that part of my responsibilities is dealing with programming and conflict resolution. And so, during this time, you have so much happening for employees. There's George Floyd, and people wanting to talk about it, wanting to see some kind of action being taking place in the agency. You also have people who are sort of isolated, and so we're doing wellness calls and trying to get people to just feel connected. We also had situations where people were still having conflict with each other. And so I wanted to just kind of give you that backdrop because part of my responsibilities was really looking out for others and caring for others. So fast forward, I'm just kind of going through the day-to-day. I don't think I've had even really an opportunity to mourn the loss of my father. And I get an email from Sethu Nair from the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, and she asked me to participate in this kind of a pilot circle. And I had no idea what a circle was or what she was up to, but it's Sethu, who I love and appreciate, and I said, fine, I'll go ahead and participate in this kind of pilot circle. So it was myself and maybe three others, and we had this virtual circle.
And during that circle, we started really talking about well, how are we coping during this pandemic? And in that moment was maybe the first time that I felt like I was seen; I could speak in a very authentic way. I didn't have to worry about my title as a commissioner. I felt like I was also seen in a different type of way or heard in a different kind of way. So if I'm talking to you about my father and the things that... maybe the pain that I was feeling. And you're sitting there, there's just a different way of, I think, being heard and being seen. I left that circle feeling as though there was some kind of emotional lift that I had. And I needed to have that because I still had to go ahead and continue to do my job. From that moment, I realized there was some value in circles. I started participating in a couple of citywide restorative practices circles that were held. I started doing some more training in restorative practices. I found myself participating as well as facilitating circles. I also started really talking about this in a church setting. So you read that I was a deacon in church, and I said, well, maybe there's a place for congregants to start really talking about some heavier issues. And so I saw this as an opportunity to get people to start to come together, to have authentic conversations, to have the ability to see each other and hear each other in a way that in most workplace settings you just don't have. You know, you have maybe a town hall-style meeting, maybe you have a team meeting, but this idea of people coming together and everyone has a voice in the circle, I thought was really impactful and meaningful. And so that's kind of how I started. And I've been really and truly loving it and enjoying it, and really want to continue sort of augmenting my knowledge and also facilitating circles.
Claire de Mezerville López
That is such a beautiful story. And I love that it allows us to get to know you more as a person. And I wanna say I admire Sethu so much. And it was an honor to have her on the podcast as well. Iyana, please tell us about the work you are doing at the New York City Parks and Recreation Department and that human aspect of it, that I believe has a lot to do with your expertise and experience.
Iyana Titus
Yes, so I told you some of what I do as the assistant commissioner for diverse equity, inclusion, and belonging is really thinking about forums where we're bringing people together, especially around issues of diversity, and I guess giving voice or giving space for people to share, to do storytelling. And so we started at the Parks Department; we actually started somewhat during the pandemic with our Parks Enforcement Patrol. And I want to again paint a little bit of a backdrop so you can understand what you know we call them PEP officers, but let's just say police officers might see in their duties. And so, the manager for the Parks Enforcement Patrol, our police, came to me, and she said, you know, I need to understand how I can support my officers better. And she said specifically, I'd like to figure out a way to support the officers who are utilizing the Narcan in order to resuscitate people who've overdosed on drugs. So, this was relatively new training that some of our officers have been through. I want you to envision for a second that not every park is the ideal park like Central Park, and people are, you know, bicycling or walking, or you've got kids playing. But in some parts of our parks, there's drug use, and there's a lot of drug use. And so you have people who are in enforcement who might be seeing people who are overdosing every day. And you also have to envision too, like, you know, you think about your average police officer; they're not the type of people who typically are saying, you know, I need some help, I want to go to the employee assistance program. But so, we were just trying to figure out, well, how can we support them, give them an opportunity to just kind of talk about this experience and process what's happening? And so, we introduced circles as that mechanism for them to just start talking. And we had Sethu from the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution help facilitate that. So I call that the pilot program at the Parks Department. And what I ended up doing from that pilot is actually having those officers come and speak to senior leaders about their experience and restorative practices. I also invited that manager who said, man, I need to figure out how do I support my officers. And then, of course, I have the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution also present. And the officers started talking about what it's like to every day have to use the Narcan or to see the amount of people who've overdosed, and then how restorative practices were impactful.
And I have to say that it was dead silence in the room because it was just so impactful to hear this person tell this story. And it was so interesting that after that story was told, I said, well, you know, I'd like to introduce more circles at the parks department. And right away, someone raised their hand and said, well, we as senior leaders need to go through circles. We need to know what this is. And I was so excited that senior leaders actually wanted to participate in circles. And so we had circles where senior leaders had an opportunity to really talk a little bit about what is challenging to be a senior leader. Yes, it's challenging. And I think too, in a large organization, I never try to like sort of ram an idea down people's throat, if you know what I mean. I try to do a nice ask of: Would you be open to maybe trying a circle to support your employees? Would you be open to doing or participating in empathy circles? And so, I kind of have to gingerly kind of market this idea. And so, what ended up happening from senior leaders, we started just basically having them participating in circles. I had various divisions request to participate in circles. There were times when we actually, my unit actually sponsored certain types of circles around empathy. But we just were out there just doing it. And in the midst of us kind of doing it, people were like, well wait a minute, how can we do some capacity building? You know, Iyana, you can't be the only person who's facilitating the circle for an organization that has 10,000 employees. And so that was when we decided that we need to have a cohort of circle keepers and we need to get them trained. And we need to think about how do we have professional development of this group and how do we make sure they're engaged? And so we've come such a long way as an organization on restorative practices work. I'll say this: that recently we had one unit had a retreat and they wanted to use circles to kind of talk a little bit about what's working, and what's not working in the division. They wanted to talk a little bit about sort of the community and stakeholders, and so it was a very different type of circle. We've also had a lot of circles around supporting our supervisors, and you can imagine like the summer is a really a stressful time period for a lot of our supervisors in maintenance and operations. We're usually a pretty small agency, but the ask of us is pretty demanding. You know, people want to clean park, and we were trying to think about ways to support those employees. And I wanted to share at least a couple of sort of moments I think that touched me.
I was facilitating a circle for group of maintenance and operations supervisors. And you know, they're not used to talking in a circle. And so, I keep it kind of light. And, you know, I started with you know, the values. And then one of my first questions is usually like, what brought you to parks? And, you know, what brought you to a particular borough? And one employee started talking about starting out in our welfare to work program, and how a supervisor really saw potential in her and how she moved up in the ranks. And then she just started crying. And I think she started crying because she was grateful for the fact that she was in the position where she was, but she was crying because someone saw something in her. And I think, unfortunately in our society, sometimes we see people who are on welfare in a negative way. And she was saying, well, she had a different experience and she was expressing a lot of gratitude around it. But the story to me was impactful. It was impactful because it helped me to understand that maybe aspects of this program were working and that there was a value in this particular program. But it helped me to understand the power of when a supervisor is invested in an employee and cares about employees and can help that employee grow. But to hear from her, you know, to hear this from this woman's mouth was just absolutely impactful. And the second story that I'll share is a situation where a woman lost her child to violence. And she felt like, well, you know, I didn't get enough, I didn't hear enough from the agency. And in that moment she just started crying. And we in the circle rally behind her in that moment, in in terms of her grief. And so I just feel like it's just been such a powerful experience in terms of getting us to come together as a community. And we've also, I'll just say this, we started talking after training so that we're having opportunities to reflect on trainings and things of that nature.
Claire de Mezerville López
That is so impactful and I deeply believe that the circle offers us an opportunity to bring our best selves to each other. Iyana, let us take a short break so we can continue with this important conversation. Everyone, please stay tuned.
Welcome back to Restorative Works. Iyana, I have one final question for you. We learned about the article that you wrote entitled Using Restorative Practices to Create Restorative Park Systems. How was the response to that article? And how do you envision this important pathway to evolve in the future?
Iyana Titus
Well, we received a lot of positive response. I posted it on LinkedIn, so of course there were the likes and things like that. But I think more importantly, we're trying to think a little bit more about how do we move forward as an agency and where else can we utilize circles. And so I wanted to at least say that what I see sort of coming out of this is us incorporating more circles, incorporating it internally as well as externally, and thinking about how do we bring communities in parks, like giving them the opportunity, how do we give them the opportunity to come together and speak. And if you think about parks as an agency, it's an agency that really brings people together. A lot of times it might be a picnic, barbecue, all those things, but nevertheless it's an agency where people come together. My dream, my ask is that every park system across this nation offers restorative practices. Just like we offer camp, just like we offer the barbecue grills, can we consider utilizing parks as sort of that agency, that organization where we provide restorative practices internally as well as externally. That's my ask. And I really hope and I've been working on, I'll say this, I've been working on a long-term strategic plan as well as a playbook. And ideally, it'd be great that we take these tools and I can share those with other governmental agencies, but definitely if I could share those with other parks systems, that to me would be very impactful. And I think in having and utilizing restorative practices in this way, maybe we could see each other better, maybe we could talk more, maybe we can have more peace instead of conflict. And I just think that parks as an agency is really that place where things are truly restored.
Claire de Mezerville López
That is so inspiring, and I can so easily see parks as being that space for community in a time and age where we don't have that many spaces for community.
Iyana Titus
Yeah. Yes, I definitely agree with that. So, I'm excited and hopeful, and I definitely feel that if we can have more opportunities to come together to talk and sometimes to talk even when there's conflict, I think we will be better as a society. I definitely would love to see our governmental leaders utilize restorative practices more, especially when conversing with the constituents that they represent. And some of the things that I see on television seem not necessarily conducive for hearing each other and seeing each other. And so I'm hopeful, I'm excited, I have big plans in my brain. But nevertheless, I think New York City is taking a really big step. And I think we're one of the few, if not the only one, park system that's really trying to put something in practice internally and thinking about it externally as well.
Claire de Mezerville López
Iyana, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Iyana Titus
You're so welcome, and thank you for having me.
Claire de Mezerville López
And thank you all for tuning in to Restorative Works. To learn more about our guests, log on to IIRP.edu and let's continue to build transformation through dignifying relationships, kind conversations, and stronger communities. Until our next episode.