When phone calls woke Susan Myers in the middle of the night, she heard distress on the other end, most of the time from women. I was beat up tonight. I was able to leave the house when he fell asleep. Where can I go?
Myers, then a graduate student in her early 20s, would jump into her pickup truck and race off to meet the strangers, often in parking lots around Gainesville, Fla. Dozens of women and their children would come to ride in that truck as she escorted them by twilight to domestic violence shelters.
Her experience with vulnerable families fueled Myers’ passion for social justice issues related to domestic violence. She began working as a counselor at the shelter, and often found herself doing everything else: going to court with the women and coordinating emergency services.
More than 30 years later, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners approved hiring Myers as the new director of the Department of County Human Services on Thursday, Feb. 16. She comes to Multnomah County from Broward County, Fla., the 18th-most-populated county in the United States, where she served as the director of the Department of Human Services since 2008. Myers managed a $136 million budget and oversaw a staff of 500 employees who served nearly 1.8 million residents.
Myers begins her new job March 5.
Myers’ 30-year career spans the spectrum of social and human services positions, the bulk of that time was spent in substance abuse treatment services. She has also served domestic violence clients, incarcerated women, children with autism, youth in psychiatric hospitals, and rape and sexual assault clients.
Her path to help others and strengthen the community was forged at an early age.
“I was always raised in my family with the philosophy that it’s always important to give back,’’ Myers said, “and to be in service to your community or to your fellow people.”
The early years
Myers grew up the eldest of three daughters in Philadelphia to two parents who owned a small corner grocery store and deli. By 5, the self-described shy girl was delivering groceries in her wagon to neighbors. She worked at the store after school and worked her way up to cashier earning pay increases along the way: 50 cents an hour up to 75 cents an hour.
Her job taught her how to manage money, and more importantly, to have a strong work ethic. And, her daily interaction with customers brought her out of her shell.
With limited access to outdoor activities in Philadelphia, Myers often visited the library, roller skating rink and participated in the Brownies. When she was 13, her family moved to Bradenton, Fla., a beach town on the Gulf of Mexico, and the teenage Myers found herself in a new world. She noted the racism and gender issues she hadn’t observed before, including the lack of girls sports at her high school.
“It was a culture shock for me. In Philadelphia they didn’t even need Title IX,” she said, referring to the federal law passed in 1972 that bans sex discrimination in schools. She played softball, but had to join church and community leagues to continue playing.
After high school, Myers enrolled at the University of Florida where she dabbled in pre-medicine until she took an organic chemistry class, and then studied business until she realized it was all about making money for someone else. “It just didn’t feel right to me,” she said.
So, she changed her major to psychology and shortly after took a volunteer job at a suicide crisis line. Though she was only 20, she found herself working with people who wanted to end their lives. She listened to their stories, and pointed them toward resources that might cause them to change their minds.
“I’ve often been told that I’m very calm and relaxed, especially in a time of crisis,” Myers said.
A new path
Myers went on to earn her master’s degree from the University of Florida, and then to work in behavioral health services at rehabilitation centers that focused on psychiatric treatment and children’s mental health. Later, she found her way back to working with clients who had been sexually and physically abused.
After spending several years working as a community education director at the DC Rape Crisis Center in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s, Myers returned to Gainesville and took a job as the program manager for Alachua County’s Metamorphosis Substance Abuse Treatment Program. She rose through the administrative ranks at Alachua County eventually becoming the assistant director of the Department of Community Support Services, which provided health and human services including primary health care, suicide and crisis prevention and veteran services.
In 2008, Myers took a job at Broward County and was named the director of the Department of Human Services shortly after. Though her position was far removed from the clients she once served, Myers said it made her understand their concerns and experiences in a more meaningful way.
“I’ve had to let more of that close contact go,” she said. “It is a loss. I think you apply those skills in other ways. Now, I do it with my management team, I do it with the community members that I interact with. It’s all about connecting with people.”
In her new role, Myers will oversee Multnomah County’s Department of County Human Services, which has six divisions that provide addiction and mental health, domestic violence, aging and disability and other services to vulnerable populations.
She first became familiar with the county after visiting Portland for the National Association of Counties’ conference in July. When she returned home, she began researching counties that did exceptional work in human services – that’s when she saw the job opening.
“My heart kind of beat a little harder,” she said.
She has visited Portland numerous times and said she became enchanted by the community’s commitment to the environment and social justice.
“(The county) has a national reputation of doing good work in human services,” she said. “And it was certainly a place I wanted to work. It’s also a place I wanted to live.”
She’s already begun to analyze how Multnomah County differs from Broward County. One of the most obvious differences: the number of homeless youth.
“I have a lot to learn, but you can’t be in Portland and not recognize the homeless population, and not just homeless, but also a lot of homeless youth,” Myers said. “The few times I’ve been there, I’ve seen a much larger population of homeless youth than we’ve seen in South Florida. Here we open cold weather shelters when it gets to 45 degrees. In Portland, there are people sleeping in the streets at 45 degrees.”
When it comes to other weather-related issues, she’s happy to leave some behind.
“I’m not going to miss the hurricanes,” she said. “My job is responsible for all the emergency shelters…and it’s a year-round activity. When you see those things spinning in the Caribbean it does nothing but create anxiety.”
As Multnomah County’s residents continue to diversify, Myers said she is ready for the challenge. She has lived and worked in a community that has a 44 percent white non-Hispanic population, compared with Multnomah County’s 72 percent, according to the latest U.S. census data.
“We are a majority-minority community,” Myers said of Broward County. “Dealing with diversity issues is every day.”
Myers said she is looking forward to working in and for the community.
“It is important for me to know that whatever I’m doing day in and day out, the goal is to help somebody because we’re all in this together,” Myers said.