Pamela Ayers

Over the course of her career, Pam has crafted a co-creative, human centered design approach to her work in grants and program development and strategy. Her methodology follows the philosophy that any program or project must start with the people for whom we’re designing and end with a tailor-made solution to attain their own identified aspirations. Pam draws from an innate empathic nature and 25 years working in human services to facilitate creative, diverse groups toward developing solutions.

Prior to partnering with Empreinte, Pam served as the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives & Project Development at Coordinated Care Services, Inc (CCSI), where she partnered closely with customers and stakeholders to identify critical program and community needs and design projects and services individualized to meet these needs. Such projects included a community-wide COVID prevention initiative for the Monroe County homeless shelter system and a County-City partnership to disperse federal eviction prevention funds. Pam has provided leadership and customer relationship management for the organization’s Capacity Building team and served in a fractional COO role for several small, community-based organization partners, building on a passion Pam has for strengthening infrastructure so that small organizations can do their critical work on the stability of strong foundations.

Before CCSI, Pam worked for Hillside Family of Agencies for 20 years, in both clinical and administrative roles. Ultimately, she developed and led the Public Grants and Program Development function, comprised of a team responsible for the design and sustainability of programs across the multi-affiliate, $100M+ organization. This team won the company more than $50M in grants funding over the last seven years of Pam’s time with Hillside. In addition to public grants procurement, Pam also led multiple systems redesign and community collaborative projects over her time with the organization.

Pam is a social worker by nature, which drives her to give back to her community in and out of work. Pam serves as a proud board member for Compeer Rochester, hosts a Roc Food Not Bombs community food stand at her home, and is an active board member and volunteer for her two children’s sport and musical endeavors. She is a triathlete, a runner, a dog lover, and an aspiring Adirondack 46-er with her husband, Alex.

Pam earned her Master of Social Work from Syracuse University and her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Elmira College.