My experiences as a prosecutor, public defender, and law professor led me to restorative justice, where the power of stories to bridge the disconnect within and amongst us is a profound reality.

I am grateful to my mentors Bernard Kops, Emilio Williams, and Edward Einhorn for teaching me the craft of storytelling as a playwright. I have three well-worked plays at various stages of development, and I am excited to find collaborators to share the wisdom of elders that each play embraces as a theme. I am spending a semester as a playwright at the National Theatre Institute, embracing the legacy of American theatre.

Mata Gee, in development with PopUp Production, follows four generations of women from the Partition of India to present-day New York, blending memory, movement, and humor.

American Tune, a musical in development with music by James Bally, sends a detained immigrant and his overworked public defender to the Supreme Court, where the six women who have served as Justices appear as The Supremes, a gospel choir of constitutional guardians.

Cosmic Dancer, now in rewrites, asks whether love can really conquer all, with original music, Indian classical dance-inspired movement, and puppetry. It tells the love story of Shiva and Parvati and the birth of Ganesha. I received the Audrey Residency for Cosmic Dancer.

I also have two books in progress: FireKeeper, on what justice means in an unjust world, and City of Maya, on ancestral lessons from the Gita, written with Alan Finger.

My fiction appears in Queens Noir (Akashic Books), and I directed the documentary Three Soldiers and won the Kodak Award for my short film The Bride Wears Red. I have also published articles on legal issues.

I spent twenty-five years in criminal law before I founded The Restorative Center, which has since run thousands of circles in schools, workplaces, and communities. read more here: TheRestorativeCenter.org

I live in New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Other work includes:

Three Soldiers - a film
Three families of Americans soldiers who died serving in the Iraq war.

The Bride Wears Red - a film
Kodak Award-winning short about Indian identity.

Avoid Agony - short story
Published in the Queens Noir anthology.

FireKeeper - a narrative non-fiction book (in progress)
A prosecutor turned public defender turned restorative justice advocate charts her thirty-year passage out of a system built on punishment and toward one built on repair.

The City of Maya - a non fiction book (in progress)
The Bhagavad Gita's questions of duty, illusion, and right action, carried into a modern life that has to answer them.

The Restorative Center

A restorative justice nonprofit, where she has seen storytelling create connection in the midst of community crisis and watched intergenerational story sharing build pathways through the primal transmission of wisdom.

Shailly consults with workplace organizations and school districts to offer leadership training in embedding the values of the restorative justice landscape. Shailly developed TRC's unique curriculum to teach restorative justice to educators, attorneys, social workers, youth leaders, and community members. She brings years of experience to advocate for the power and potential of restorative justice so that we can remember who we truly are.

Shailly spent more than 20 years as an attorney, with expertise in criminal justice through working as a prosecutor (Orleans Parish), teaching (Georgetown Law School, Southern University Law Center), and as a public defender (New York City). She had the privilege of studying (as a Prettyman Fellow) with Professor William Greenhalgh, whose love for the Constitution and the rights it affords the accused inspired her legal career. She has come to understand the power of facilitated Restorative Justice circles to guide individuals and communities to a deeper emergent wisdom of justice. She has a J.D. (cum laude) from Tulane Law School and an LL.M. (Prettyman Fellowship) from Georgetown Law.

Shailly has presented at conferences around the world on TRC's vision for an independent free-standing model for Restorative Justice. She has facilitated restorative justice circles for schools, community centers, organizations and the workplace.

Published works include:

A black-and-white illustration of a woman's face, signature, and the word 'WRITES' on a light gray background.