by Kym Byrnes, photography by Nikola Tzenov
As executive director of CCYSB, Liza Guroff is expanding access to mental health services by listening to and partnering with the community she calls home.
Last summer, Liza Guroff became the executive director of the Carroll County Youth Service Bureau (CCYSB), following the extraordinary tenure of Lynn Davis, whose decades of leadership shaped the organization and strengthened the community.
In this new role, Guroff is deepening her commitment to the community. In addition to her professional path in youth-focused, community-centered work at the state and national levels, she has raised her family in Carroll and, in recent years, has served as an elected official on Sykesville’s City Council.
She approaches this next chapter with gratitude for the big shoes she fills and a clear, hopeful vision for what comes next, with a focus on expanding access to thoughtful, responsive mental health services across Carroll County. As this Q&A reveals, Guroff leads with empathy, curiosity and collaboration, ready to listen, learn and help Carroll County’s residents thrive.
What brought you to Carroll County?
I grew up in Montgomery County and left for college, grad school and work. I returned to the area with my family to be close to my parents. I moved to Carroll County in 2003 to raise my family. We’ve raised four boys here, and I have loved it. My sons now range in ages from 20 to 27, and we added on to our house so we could move my mom in with us.
What does the CCYSB do?
We serve all ages, with a variety of treatment options and delivery methods. We are not a government agency; we are a nonprofit, run by a volunteer board of directors who are community leaders. We provide community-based mental health and substance use services for children, adults and families in Carroll County.
How is the CCYSB funded?
Our funding comes from a mix of sources. We can bill Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance. We get county and state funding, and we have partnerships with local organizations like the schools and the local management board. We have private donors, and we do our own fundraising as well.
“The fact that I can bring what I’ve learned in study and practice at the state and national level here to the local level where I live makes this work very meaningful to me.”
You’ve worked at the state and national level. What features about the executive director role at the CCYSB appeal to you? I am a licensed clinical marriage and family therapist. I’ve been in the field for a long time.
I got into the field to help kids in trouble and became a family therapist because I believe we can’t help kids if we can’t help the family. That’s my passion and my focus, even though my career has taken me into expanded areas.
I trained nationally in leadership and organization, understanding how to create environments that are safe, transparent, open and accountable, with clear expectations so everyone can thrive. We look at how, as leaders, we create that culture, sustain it and make it the norm to operate. I have known of the Youth Service Bureau for a long time. This is my dream job, and I feel very blessed and humbled to be able to do this work here.
What are the challenges to running an organization focused on providing mental health services to a community?
Right now, it’s the federal and state changes that don’t necessarily make it easy to tailor funding to Carroll County’s unique needs. I saw this when working on state-level initiatives. Maryland is driven by what’s happening along the I-95 corridor and what the big cities need — Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.
As you go across the state, you see all swaths of life. We have the beach, mountains, metro and rural areas, and even Amish families. You can also pick any industry — manufacturing and agriculture — we have all of that.
When policies and programming are driven by a metro perspective, that model doesn’t work when you move out to a rural county like Carroll.
What keeps me up at night is figuring out how to meet the community’s unique needs while maximizing the changing funding streams.
These are conversations, as providers and as a county, about how we assess the real need here, not what someone else tells us that we need or what they tell us they’ll fund.
How collaborative is your work?
When I was doing work across the state, I learned that our system here in Carroll County is different in a really good way. The amazing thing about Carroll is how collaborative we are — the commissioners, the provider community and the nonprofit community.
“Being part of this level of collaboration is wonderful professionally; the goal is making the county better for everyone.”
Here, the focus is more on meeting the needs of the community, and there isn’t fighting or jockeying for position. There’s a real sense of collaboration. We have community leaders who sit on multiple nonprofit boards, which helps make organizations more aware of the value of sharing resources and collaborating rather than about competition.
We also partner with organizations and agencies throughout the county and state, including the school system, local colleges, the local management board, the library system and many others.
What is at the top of your to-do list as you approach the end of your first year in the position?
My board [of directors] and the county tasked us with trying to figure out ways to provide more community-based services. We’re working to remove transportation barriers and engage more people outside the city of Westminster to address the increase in complexity of children and family needs.
For example, it can be challenging to get a family of five into an office, or for someone struggling with depression to get off the couch and come into an office. We have been charged with figuring out how to get out of our offices more and into people’s communities and homes.
At the same time, with around 70 staff members and numerous programs, we’re also a couple of years into a project to expand our office spaces at our Westminster building. We’re growing because of the needs of the county, and we’re trying to grow in a mindful, purposeful way to make our spaces work for both our clients and our staff.
Who inspires you in your work?
Our staff and our clients. I can’t tell you enough about how amazing our staff are, how committed they are and how above and beyond they go for our clients and for each other. Of our full-time staff, about 76% are local residents. They work here, live here and are our neighbors.
This is personal work for us. At times, we underestimate the strength of the human spirit. From the outside looking in, we too often see the deficits and not the strengths that people bring.
For me, whether it’s clients or staff, if we can heighten those strengths and see them flourish, grow and build, that’s what I love seeing and doing. I’m most inspired when someone flourishes when no one thought they could, when people tap into strengths they didn’t even know they had.
