ABOUT
Sharon Thompson-Ayers
Sharon Thompson Ayers has over 30 years of experience in the field of healthcare and aging to include strategic planning and grant writing. She has served as an advocate for Older Americans at the national, state and local levels. She currently serves as a grant reviewer for the Administration on Community Living (ACL) and the Corporation for National and Community Service (NCSC).
She recently worked as a team lead for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) quality improvement project, Everyone with Diabetes Counts (EDC), an initiative to reduce disparities in diabetes care. As a Certified Senior Trainer in the Diabetes Empowerment Education Program (DEEP) with the University of Illinois at Chicago, Sharon assisted Health Services Advisory Group, Inc., the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Arizona, California, Florida, Ohio, and the U.S. Virgin Islands in exceeding CMS goals and deliverables of providing diabetes self-management education to Florida seniors by 64%. She and het team trained over 4 senior trainers, 60 lead trainers, 500 peer educators and 20,000 Medicare beneficiaries and supporters.
Prior to working on EDC, Ms. Ayers worked on a CMS Special Innovation Project Her experience also includes community outreach, volunteer management, strategic planning and grant writing. She spent the majority of her career at the Area Agency on Aging (AAA) as the Director of Planning and Evaluation. During her 14 years with the AAA, she also supervised programs including Health and Wellness, Senior Medicare Fraud and Abuse, Access to Benefits and Florida’s State Health Insurance Assistance Program. Mrs. Ayers returns to the Florida from the City of Newport News where she led the management and implementation of the City’s Task Force on Aging. She brought new and innovative housing and transportation initiatives to the City.
Sharon received her Master’s in Social Work with a focus on Policy and Program Development from the University of Chicago. She earned a BS in Psychology and a certification in Gerontology from Tougaloo College in Jackson, MS. She also studied Psychology at Brown University.