News
#USAgingHere4You: Sara Tribe-Clark
- By: USAging
- On: 03/15/2024 08:38:54
- In: Program Update
Sara has had an extensive career in the aging field with her interest beginning when she was a child. “Since I was a child, I always gravitated toward older adults. I had awesome grandparents and chose volunteering at a local nursing home for my high school service project. I didn't love the setting, but I loved the residents, and continued to visit them in the summers and holiday breaks for years after graduating from high school.”
Her first job was as a case manager at Boston Senior Home Care. Sara also held various internships across the Aging Network in Boston while she obtained her MSW with a focus on gerontology and non-profit management. She had similar positions at organizations including various Massachusetts AAAs, Springwell, ADvancing States and DC's AAA/SUA before she landed at USAging.
Since getting started at USAging, the most important thing Sara has learned is to not assume what people and groups want or need, but to empower them and improve the quality of your product by bringing stakeholders into the process. She's done a lot of work on partnership among aging and disability organizations and wants members to know she can help them in a variety of areas such as identifying starting points and partnership opportunities or coordinating a team to help I&R programs think through aging and disability I&R call center processes, QA and management and software decision points.
“Through advances in data collection and reporting I am hoping to show members in the aging network the volume and demographics of referrals provided by the Eldercare Locator and DIAL. Also provide a model for aging and disability I&R call center operations that others can replicate.”
One thing that most people don't know about Sara is that she was a guide for a blind triathlete from Virginia in a triathlon in which she qualified for the Kona Ironman in Hawaii. Her favorite books are Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling and Being Heumann–An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann.
To learn more about the Eldercare Locator and DIAL, visit eldercare.acl.gov and dial.acl.gov, or consider contacting Sara at stribeclark@usaging.org.