New Hires Reflect the Growth of, and Demand for, PSS Services
PSS, a nonprofit agency that has served older New Yorkers and their families city-wide since 1962 (www.pssusa.org), announced the appointments of Laurie Petersen to the post of Senior Director of its newly created Community Education Department and Selenie Villar to Senior Director of Older Adult Centers.
“Both these appointments are the result of the continuing growth and broadened capabilities of our agency,” said Executive Director Rimas Jasin. “In the last few years, the breadth of our offerings has expanded, enabling us to reach a significantly larger group of older adults with more targeted services and programming. We are delighted to welcome Laurie and Selenie to PSS at this exciting time.”
As head of the Community Education Department, Petersen will oversee two programs, PSS Life! University, which provides community education classes, activities and webinars, and Coming of Age, a national initiative focusing on adults 50 and over, as well as the agency’s communications and social media outreach. In 2021 alone, PSS Life! provided 600 different classes, events and activities to more than 5,000 older New Yorkers, more than doubling the number of adults reached over pre-Covid 2019, Jasin noted.
Petersen’s career has incorporated both journalism and program development. A former Editor-in-Chief of AOL Jobs and Small Business Editor of its Daily Finance website, she has written and reported on a range of topics including finance, lifestyle and aging for outlets such as MarketWatch, AARP Life Reimagined, HuffPost and PBS Next Avenue. She has partnered with major corporations and not-for-profits to create community programs—among them, working with the Children’s Aid Society and the Council for Economic Education on a curriculum designed to improve financial literacy. Petersen holds a Bachelor’s degree in communications from Rowan University and is an alumna of the Union Theological Seminary’s Encore Transitions Program.
Villar joined PSS shortly after it was awarded a $5.2 million, three-year OAC (Older Adult Center) contract from NYC’s Department for the Aging (DFTA). The largest DFTA contract in PSS’s history, it will enable major expansion of the capabilities of its ten senior centers in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, said Jasin. Among some of the programs that will benefit from the funds will be PSS’s digital training initiative, which grew substantially during Covid, but continues to adapt and grow to meet the needs of the organization’s seniors. Villar also will be adding several new programs to address issues of social isolation among Center members.
A native New Yorker, Villar comes to PSS from the Bronx YMCA where she was a Program Director. In that post, she helped improve programming and develop new initiatives, such as financial literacy and digital capacity, for the community. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Health, with a concentration on leadership and administration, from Monroe College.
