Pamela Ayers, MSW

As the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives & Project Development, Pamela Ayers joined CCSI to closely partner with customers and stakeholders in identifying critical program and community needs in order to design projects and services tailored specifically to meet these needs. Among her roles, Pam leads the Capacity Building area of practice for CCSI, an area that provides customers with essential services that include Human Resources, Compliance, Specialized Financial Management, and Grant Development. Pam also supports CCSI’s work within the community on special projects, key collaborations, and project development and management. In all of her work, Pam utilizes a co-creative, Human Centered Design approach, following the philosophy that any program or project design and development must start with the people we’re designing for and end with a tailor-made solution to meet their identified needs. Pam draws from an innate empathic nature and 20+ years working in community-based services to facilitate creative, diverse groups toward developing solutions. As part of understanding needs and gaps in our service delivery systems, Pam also partners with leaders and policy makers at state and local levels to understand the drivers of evolving policy, funding and practice changes. She then uses this knowledge to help CCSI continue to shape service and technical assistance strategies to best support customers in forecasting and navigating these changes. Pam believes that collective, collaborative creativity is the key to success.
 
Prior to coming to CCSI, Pam worked for Hillside Family of Agencies, both in clinical and administrative roles, most recently as the Director of Public Grants and Program Development. She earned her Master of Social Work from Syracuse University and her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Elmira College.