Sil Lai Abrams is an award-winning writer, anti-gender violence activist, and restorative justice advocate. A sought-after speaker and workshop facilitator on gender violence, race, and diversity, equity inclusion, she has worked with over three hundred organizations and universities around the United States. She has been profiled in magazines such as The Hollywood Reporter, EBONY, Redbook, Modern Woman, and ESSENCE. Since 2007 she has fought to bring greater awareness to issues impacting Black women and has served on the Board of Directors of two of the nation’s largest victim services nonprofit organizations, Safe Horizon and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Abrams is an avid advocate for restorative justice and is currently developing programming that takes a restorative approach to address interpersonal conflict and harm within the workplace. This emerging discipline in the areas of equity, diversity, and inclusion, referred to as "restorative human resources," is aligned with industry best practices.
Abrams regularly writes about issues impacting women of color for numerous national outlets, including the Daily Beast, TheGrio, Huffpost, and Marie Claire. Her books, the 2007 self-help tome No More Drama: Nine Simple Steps to Transforming a Breakdown into a Breakthrough, and the 2016 memoir Black Lotus: A Woman's Search for Racial Identity received critical acclaim from numerous literary journals including Kirkus Reviews and the Library Journal. In 2012, her EBONY essay "Passing Strangely" won the National Association of Black Journalists’ “Salute to Excellence Award” in the Commentary/Essay Category as part of the magazine's "Multiracial in America" package.
In 2017, Abrams returned to school after a 33-year hiatus when she was selected as a Bryn Mawr College McBride Scholar. In 2021 she graduated cum laude with a major in political science completed at Haverford College. Her senior thesis on the applicability and efficacy of restorative justice in cases of sexual violence won The Emerson S. Darnell 1940 Prize, an annual award named in honor of Emerson Darnell, a Quaker alumnus who dedicated his life’s work to advocating peaceful social change and defending the civil rights of the individual.
