Sozi Pedro Tulante, the city solicitor for the City of Philadelphia.
Sozi Pedro Tulante, the city solicitor for the City of Philadelphia, will address the graduates of the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law at commencement on May 18.
The school will celebrate 168 graduates during its 9th commencement ceremony, held at the Kimmel Center, in Verizon Hall (300 S. Broad Street).
Tulante was appointed by Mayor Jim Kenney and confirmed by City Council as city solicitor in February 2016. Prior to his appointment, Tulante spent five years as an assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia representing the government in criminal investigations and prosecutions, including one of the biggest seizures in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The recipient of multiple awards, Tulante has been named one of Pennsylvania’s “Diversity Attorneys of the Year” by The Legal Intelligencer, one of the Philadelphia area’s “101 Next Generation Connectors,” by LEADERSHIP Philadelphia, and included in the Philadelphia Business Journal’s "40 Under 40” list.
Before he became Philadelphia’s chief legal officer, he was a partner at Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, where he concentrated on general commercial litigation and pro bono matters – including the representation of a detainee in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During his time Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, he also severed as a member of former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s transition team. Previously he practiced at Goodwin Proctor LLP in Boston, and clerked for the late Honorable Reginald C. Lindsay of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Tulante was born in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and came to Philadelphia as a political refugee in 1983 with his family. A proud graduate of Philadelphia’s public schools, Tulante attended Mary McLeod Elementary School, Russell Conwell Middle School and Northeast High School.
He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1997, where he was recognized with a John Harvard Scholarship, and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 2001.