Sylvia Peters was a founding partner of The Edison Project. Its primary purpose was to create a new paradigm of schooling in America, and enter into public school partnerships in communities throughout the nation. Her duties included; the management of educational research in the areas of curriculum and instruction, supervision and administration, professional development for teachers, conducting focus groups among teachers, parents and students; and working collaboratively with colleagues to design the model.

Peters was a Chicago Public Schools educator with extensive teaching, curriculum and instruction, and administrative, and supervisory skills. As the Principal of Alexandre Dumas Elementary School in Chicago she managed a staff of seventy-seven; implemented stringent budgeting and accounting measures; wrote proposals to secure additional funds for program support; developed and wrote strategic plans in a collaborative manner; and supervised the school’s two campuses.

Peters was a consultant to the Enterprise Foundation and served as the director of education for the foundation’s Compact Schools Project in Baltimore, Maryland. She designed and implemented an innovative model of education for low performing students that received critical acclaim from educators, policy makers, and private foundations throughout the nation Her responsibilities included the management of three elementary schools in the community, developing support programs for the initiative, gathering funding support for programs and expanding the project to other communities in the nation. The project was the recipient of an award from the Annenberg Foundation to validate the work of the Baltimore project, and several months later, Peters and the Enterprise Foundation were awarded funds to implement the work in Los Angeles and Atlanta.

She is nationally recognized as an educator who infused values education into the culture of the Dumas School that reduced the teenage pregnancy rate to zero. Her work in the field of character education was responsible for values programs being implemented in thousands of classrooms in Chicago, and throughout the nation. Peters is also known as an advocate of local school autonomy, school restructuring, and systemic reform. She organized principals in Chicago to lead the school reform movement; helped to establish two professional development centers for principals; and created an innovative program THE CHILDREN’S HOUSE OF LEARNING that taught parents, school staff, business and university partners how to effectively collaborate and reform public schools in the city.

Peters, an experienced septuagenarian educator, and Trey Townsend, a gifted young adult film maker, recently formed a production company, LEGACY WORKS to produce documentary films that engage and inspire people to act upon issues that are vital to the social, emotional, and educational health of the country.