Fay Gibson

Project Officer

Office: 919-843-9136
fay_gibson@unc.edu

Job Focus

Provide technical assistance, consultation and program support to a portfolio of grantees and multi-disciplinary community partnerships designed to promote active living and healthy eating through policy and environmental interventions. Work as part of our project team on program development, facilitation of learning networks, development of tools and resources and field-building activities (presentations in national state or regional contexts, consultations to other funders and organizations, dissemination of lessons learned); work with grantees to ensure effective program implementation and fulfillment of project goals; and conduct site visits for diagnostic and monitoring purposes.

Why am I working at Active Living By Design?

Thus far, my professional career has focused primarily on the development of human service delivery systems designed to improve the lives of vulnerable individuals and families and, understanding and influencing social policy that provides the context for those systems. In this regard, I have participated in the design and delivery of various systems that seek to address a specific human service need, i.e., economic empowerment, quality child care, child welfare, community-based mental health services, substance abuse addiction and recovery as well as other co-occurring disorders. The opportunity to now focus on the physical health and well being of individuals and the lack of built environments that support an active living lifestyle is one that interests me greatly and that I enthusiastically embrace the need for. Thus, while I see my work at Active Living By Design as a natural continuation of my commitment to improving the quality of life for individuals, I also see the opportunity to work collaboratively with my ALBD colleagues and with community partnerships to encourage healthy eating and active lifestyles, particularly among those who have had the least access to those resources, as both an honor and a privilege.

Bio

Fay Gibson has over thirty years of management experience in the public, private and non-profit sectors, including small social services agencies in rural North Carolina, the New York City social services system and a national think/action tank. She has created organizational structures, established community-based health and social service interventions for vulnerable families, directed personnel departments, supervised junior and senior level staff and overseen the management of more than 400 contracts for all subsidized day care services for the City of New York totaling more than $350 million per year. These experiences and her professional training have given her a unique and extensive set of leadership, analytical, human resource management skills and, comprehensive knowledge of the principles and practices of program planning and development. All of which have taken place within large, complex bureaucracies existing in highly political environments.

Prior to her current role, Fay Gibson served as Senior Program Associate for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) where she managed program operations for an 11-site national demonstration program and later served as Co-Principle Investigator for a related clinical trial; Program Director for one of the 11 CASA national demonstration programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC where she was recruited to manage program operations for the national program; and served as Social Worker for the Orange County Department of Social Services in Orange County, NC.

Over the course of 17 years, Fay Gibson also worked in progressively more senior positions in City of New York public agencies including The Human Resources Administration, a 23,000 employee-umbrella social services agency responsible for all welfare, child welfare, and homeless services in New York City; as Assistant Deputy Commissioner for the Agency for Child Development; Personnel Director for over 1300 staff for the Office Of Family Services; Senior Management Analyst for the Department of General Social Services; and as Contract Analyst for the City of New York's Department for the Aging.

Ms. Gibson earned a BA in Sociology from Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York and a MS in Community Organizing and Planning from Columbia University School of Social Work.