Valeria A. Gheorghiu

Valeria Gheorghiu is an environmental and civil rights attorney integrating restorative justice into the practice of environmental and civil rights law.  She currently practices cooperative, environmental and civil rights law at her office in Kingston, New York.  Her more notable cases include representing the Ramapough Nation, Occupy New Paltz and advancing pagan rights in the Matter of Maetreum of Cybele, Magna Mater, Inc. v. McCoy et al.  As a multi-lingual contract attorney, Valeria co-founded United Contract Attorneys drawing from her prior work as a global justice organizer, and as a workers’ rights attorney at NGOs such as South Jersey Legal Services.  She serves on the Executive Committee of the NYC Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild as co-founder and Chair of the Restorative Justice Committee, the Board of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and the Ulster County Taskforce to help design their Restorative Justice and Community Empowerment Center.

At Vermont Law School, she was an Albert Schweitzer Fellow related to her summer internship with Alburnus Maior’s efforts to stop a gold mine in Rosia Monta, Romania.  Her 3L summer policy work on farmers’ rights at Gene Campaign in India as a Fellow for the Center for World Indigenous Studies resulted in a publication in the Fourth World Journal.  She also initiated a legal text drive to several developing country law school libraries worldwide as Co-Chair of the International Law Society.

Valeria is also a kundalini yoga teacher, and holds certificates in Ecovillage and Permaculture Design, Restorative Justice and the Priestess Path Apprenticeship.  As a community gardener, she founded the Sojourner Truth Memorial Community Garden at the Ulster County Family Courthouse.  She also teaches workshops on growing ginseng on her land in High Woods, Saugerties, New York.  She is currently co-founding the Sacred FireSchoolhouse, in Kerhonkson, New York, a restorative justice and ecovillage design community center and collective retreat center and house to help communities cocreate their own intentional communities and ecovillages.