Alice Sawyer

President & CEO

Alice Sawyer has had a distinguished 30-year career in the YMCA, retiring in September 2008. She began with the YMCA of Delaware in 1978, specializing in marketing, membership and financial development. After fourteen years of local work, she became a consultant with the YMCA of the USA, an organization with the responsibility to lead and serve the over 970 YMCA Associations in the United States. Since the late 1990’s, she has served as the national Membership Specialist for YMCAs across the country.

Customer service and coaching individuals are Alice’s real passions. She is well known as the champion for "front-line" employees, where the "real work" of any organization resides. She has been trained as a life-coach, discovering the power of listening and coaching as an exciting way to empower individuals and organizations to find their own solutions.

Alice is sought after for her motivational speeches, presentations and interactive trainings. She has created tools and other interactive resources to improve the "WOW" factor in the service experience, which also help to make the training events and learnings more action oriented and memorable.

A popular speaker and presenter at local and national conferences throughout the country, Alice has received much recognition during her career from her organization and her colleagues. The Y's professional organization, the Association of YMCA Professionals, awarded Alice their most prestigious honor, the Kuensli-Hall Award in 2002, for lifetime achievement in developing others. She was the first woman to have received this national honor.

Since retirement, Alice has started her own company, Alice Sawyer & Friends, LLC that provides coaching, consulting and training services in the area of personal and organizational development. She has begun working on two books, one of which deals with customer service.

Alice continues to serve on many boards and has done training and consulting projects with numerous organizations over the years. Working with their inner-city church, she and her husband provide spiritual leadership on Sunday mornings for a special "street ministry" to the homeless and needy. She and her husband have three grown children and five grandchildren.