Sylvia was born in Cairo, Egypt, and lived there until she came to the United States to attend college. Her education in Cairo included attendance at the English School, and graduation from the American College for Girls (now Ramses College for Girls).

She came to the United States as a foreign student, and earned a B.A. in English, at Westminster College, followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. She studied Arabic at Princeton University on a National Defense Language Fellowship. She was a linguist supervisor at the Crowell Collier Institute (a contract school for the Defense Language Institute and the Foreign Service Language Institute, in Roslyn, Virginia), where she trained and supervised native language instructors from Southeast Asia, in language teaching methodology.

Sylvia pursued doctoral studies (A.B.D.) in French History of Ideas at the University of Washington. Her doctoral dissertation subject was on the aesthetic ideas of Le Pour et Contre de Prévost. Sylvia taught English at Seattle Pacific University, taught English in the Tuskegee Institute Summer Enrichment Program, and taught French Language and Literature at Lewis & Clark College, before coming to Wellesley.

She came to Wellesley College in 1975, served two years as Head of House in Beebe Hall, followed by a year as Guest-in-Residence at Tower Court. In 1977, she became the Director of the Slater International Center and the Advisor to Foreign Students (now, the Advisor to International Students).

In 1990, Sylvia assumed the additional responsibilities of Study Abroad Advisor, and was named the Director of International Studies and Services. Her general goal, as the Director of the International Studies and Services Department, is to unify, give coherence to, and improve the international services of the College. This reflects her belief that both groups of students, students coming from abroad to study at Wellesley and students going from Wellesley to study abroad, should be approached from a common philosophical perspective that they are international students, and that it is important to help both groups of students understand the commonalty of their experiences. Above all, she hopes to give the student population a glimpse of the limitless possibilities of international experiences.

As the Director of International Studies and Services, and the Director of the Slater International Center, she is responsible for several aspects of international activities at Wellesley College. These include serving as the Advisor to International Students, handling all immigration matters at the College for international students and faculty, and serving as the International Study Advisor.

Sylvia serves as a member of the Wellesley College Board of Admissions for international applications, the International Study Committee, the Wintersession Committee, the Safety Abroad Committee, and the ad hoc Committee for Financial Aid Abroad, and the Cultural Advisors Network. Some of her other college committee responsibilities have included membership in Global Education Advisory Committee, the Peace Studies Program Committee. She founded, and served as the advisor to, the Multicultural Council from 1986 to 1998.

Sylvia founded the Global Education Program at the Slater International Center, an outreach program for teachers and students from the public school systems of nineteen towns in eastern Massachusetts, and others outside the college community interested in international and multicultural education. She received $365,000 in grants, from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, over a period of five years to operate this program.

In October 1997, she was selected by NAFSA and the Chinese Educational Commission to serve as one of a seven member delegation to represent American colleges and universities on fact-finding visits to several key universities in China.

She was given the Wellesley College President's Excellence Award in 1997, and the Wellesley College Multicultural Achievement Award in 1999.

Sylvia is a member, and former regional officer, of NAFSA: the Association of International Educators; served as the chairperson of the NAFSA National Conference on International Women Students, which was held at Wellesley College; and has participated as a chairperson and member of panel sessions at NAFSA regional and national conferences. She is a member of the Boston Area Foreign Student Advisors (BAROS), the Study Abroad Advisors Group of New England (SAAG), the Advisory Board of Acadia University, and the Advisory Council of Butler University's Institute for Study Abroad.