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As a young woman, SYLVIA CLUTE studied in Paris, France, when a unified Europe was a distant dream. She watched as French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle urged his country to cooperate economically with the rest of Europe and Germany, an example of leadership and a vision of unity that greatly influenced her. After serving as an early Peace Corps volunteer in a remote Himalayan village in Nepal, Sylvia earned her law degree and later co-founded the only women's bank in the South.
In her career as a trial attorney, she found that clients often came to her with broken relationships, looking for solutions in a legal process in which justice means vengeance. She found that her legal training provided her with no tools to help heal the breach.
She watched as this nation's criminal justice system grew to incarcerate more than 25% of all the people behind bars in the world, opening new prisons at a rate of 1 every 15 days in the decade of the 1990s. This vengeance model permeates much of our worldforeign policy, politics, corporate culture and even family life.
Disillusioned with the legal system, Sylvia began to search for a better way. She founded, led and served as an advisor to numerous community and statewide initiatives. A pioneer in legal reform, she spearheaded changes in VIrginia's laws relating to women and children. In 2001, she ran in the race for Virginia attorney general. Throughout Sylvia's journey the question continually arose, If not this system, then what? In Destiny Unveiled, that question is answered.
Sylvia holds an MA in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law, and an MA in Public Administration from the University of California at Berkeley.
She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.
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