Macon-area resident Myrtle Habersham joins executive council for Georgia

Macon-area resident Myrtle Habersham has been named to the AARP Georgia Executive Council, the policy-making and volunteer leadership team that directs AARP's efforts in Georgia.

Habersham's appointment raises total membership on the council to seven.

A native of Atlanta, Ms. Habersham brings to her role more than three decades of professional, civic and caregiving leadership – work that has been recognized repeatedly through awards and key appointments.   Ms. Habersham served more than three decades with the U.S. government, holding a succession of senior-level positions, including:

• Commissioner for the eight-state Southeastern (based in Atlanta) and six-state Midwestern (based in Chicago) regions of the Social Security Administration, each with budgets in excess of $700 million, more than 230 facilities and as many as 14,500 employees.
• Regional inspector general for the eight-state southeastern region of the Department of Health and Human Services, heading up the white-collar criminal and civil investigative operations for 300-plus federal programs.
• Associate director for the Office of Management Planning in the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where she had overall responsibility for facilities, business continuity and emergency planning operations as well as oversight of strategic and performance planning processes.

Her tenure with the federal government included 18 years as a member of the senior executive corps, an elite leadership group that numbers just 6,000 from among more than 2 million federal employees.  While a senior leader, she was a three-time recipient of the President’s Executive Rank Awards, an honor shared by only 1 percent of the senior executive corps, and the winner of numerous other awards for professional achievement.

After retiring from federal government service in 2010, she formed M S Habersham Consulting Services, which she leads as managing member.

Ms. Habersham has also been a visiting senior policy fellow and CARE-NET (caregiving networks) coordinator and consultant for the Rosalyn Carter Institute for Caregiving; a member of the executive boards of the AIDS Atlanta, the Andrew and Walter Young Southwest YMCA and the Urban League of Atlanta; and a member of more than a dozen other philanthropic, alumni, civic and professional associations.  She lives in Lizella, an unincorporated community straddling Bibb and Crawford counties about 11 miles southwest of Macon.