Sierra Royster
Director of Capacity Building
803-779-5121
sroyster@able-sc.org
Remote
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
As Director of Capacity Building, Sierra is responsible for developing and implementing projects to enhance internal and external expertise around independent living, disability rights, and disability justice. She is also focused on enhancing our national programming.
Sierra brings a lifetime of personal experience as a person living with disabilities. Before Able SC, she brought 19 years of experience working in the disability community, 15 of those years directly working in independent living. at the Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Raleigh, North Carolina she started as the Youth Advocate and Outreach Specialist and left as the Interim Executive Director. While there she oversaw youth services, the Youth Leadership Forum, Money Follows a Person program, travel training, and healthy relationships and sexuality training, while working with consumers. During that time, she served on the North Carolina Statewide Independent Living Council (SILC) and the Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living Programs (APRIL).
She spent almost 8 years at APRIL departing as the Director of Innovation. While there, she grew national youth leadership opportunities and assisted in organizing trainings on diversity, equity, and inclusion. She played a vital role during the pandemic as an advisor for the White House and Administration of Disabilities, helped create the Disability Access Information Line (DIAL) the national disability hotline, and assisted in data collection and advising on vaccine drives and resources. She has worked with other national disability organizations and the Administration on Community Living (ACL) to ensure that CILs and SILCs were present and could share their consumers experience for Center for Medicaid/Medicare Services (CMS) scrutiny visits with the reviews of Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) under the Settings Rule.
She graduated from the University of Mount Olive with a degree in Recreation and Leisure with a concentration in Recreational Therapy. She is licensed and nationally certified in Recreational Therapy.
In her free time, she enjoys going to the gym, hiking, being active in her church, and spending time with her family and cats.