Leveraging her family's 300-year philanthropic legacy and her 25 years' experience in international development, Sylvia Brown, CAP® is a passionate advocate of thoughtful and effective giving by ALL donors.

– Rhode Island’s Brown Family and the American Philanthropic Impulse.

What fuels a family’s compulsion to philanthropy?
When Sylvia Brown’s father handed much of his inheritance to Brown University in 1995, the gesture maintained a 300-year family philanthropic tradition.  Less than a decade later, at the inaugural symposium of the
University’s Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, one speaker declared “there were no good Browns.”
Grappling With Legacy was born of the juxtaposition between these starkly opposed perspectives.
Against Rhode Island’s distinctive backdrop, this family saga mirrors America’s evolving urge to do good, providing fresh perspectives on times surprisingly akin to the present.