Sherry was raised in the “prison capital of Canada” Kingston, Ontario. She graduated from Queen’s University in 1982, MA in African Area Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1988, and is presently completing her PhD in African-Canadian History at Simon Fraser University. Sherry is a founding member of the Black Canadian Studies Association and a lifetime member of the Association of Black Women Historians. She co-founded the L.I.N.C. (Long-term Inmates Now in the Community) Society, a transformative justice registered charity, with her late husband Glen Flett in 1994, who, despite serving a life sentence, became the only living ‘offender’ to receive a funding contract with the Correctional Services of Canada. Her and Glen have been committed to community led, peer-based practices since L.I.N.C. was established. In 2012 Sherry was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.