“How can you not enjoy making life better for people?” That is the philosophy of Chris Sieber, recipient of an ABCD employee award this year and director of one of the most crucial departments in the organization.

Chris has worked with ABCD for the better part of two decades. For the last 10 years, she has served as Planning Director, charged with the monumental task of creating strategic direction for all of ABCD’s varied programs – a dramatic career change from the major in biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which brought her to Boston.

Through simple chance, Chris ended up working for the Cambridge Council on Aging during her Cambridge years. She had never been exposed to human services or the idea of helping people. One day on the job, she recalls sitting across the table from a client. After solving his problem, she watched him get up and walk away from the table with his head lifted just a little higher. “I’ve never felt such an incredible rush,” she says.

So Chris decided to take her newly discovered passion for helping people and combine it with her problem-solving skills and enter the world of human services. Thirty years later, she hasn’t looked back.

ABCD President/CEO Bob Coard says Chris is an enormous asset to the agency. “She’s extremely smart and capable and stays on top of all the issues,” he said. “Her commitment and her grant-acquisition abilities are huge, and she works effectively and collaboratively with people in all the different units at ABCD. She helps keep ABCD on the cutting edge of change and that means we are able to help more people.”

Chris accepts this award on behalf of her staff members without whom she says none of the fantastic work that is accomplished in her department would be possible.