The very picture of public service

When, over many years, an agency finds itself repeatedly turning to the same person — to share ideas, to find out what’s going on in the community, to make connections — it seems overdue to give that person an award. And many thanks. Now, the thanks have come regularly: from the FTC’s offices in Cleveland and in D.C. But today is all about the award: specifically, the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection Partner Award for Sheryl Harris, Director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs in Ohio.

So, let’s talk about Sheryl, who regularly carries out creative and novel ideas to combat scammers. Her Scam Squad brings together Cleveland-area nonprofits, social services agencies, county agencies, and state, local, and federal law enforcement – including her partners in Cleveland’s East Central Regional Office of the FTC. Their goal? To alert Cuyahoga County residents about scams, encourage reporting, and share those reports with the agency best suited to investigate them. Sheryl has also been a champion of the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network — a database accessible by thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Sheryl leads her team in creating clear and plain language scam alerts and getting them into residents’ hands in innovative ways — including the county’s Ready Notify text message alert system. In fact, it was back in the days of Sheryl’s consumer column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer that DC-based FTC-ers first sat up and took note: of her writing, her insights, her reach into the community, and her ability to get people’s attention on urgent topics like scams.

When Congress passed the Stop Senior Scams Act in 2022, the FTC saw an opportunity to work even more closely with Sheryl. The work brought together groups of federal agencies, consumer advocates, and industry representatives on several working committees, including an Education and Outreach Committee, co-led by representatives from the US Department of Treasury, AmeriCorps Seniors, the FTC, and the Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs. In her work on that committee, Sheryl introduced the FTC to some of the best local thinking on fraud — from an Assistant City Attorney in St. Paul to Cleveland’s own Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging — and kept a focus on opportunities for feedback so we know better what’s working.

For these reasons, and so many more, the FTC is pleased to confer on Sheryl Harris the Bureau of Consumer Protection Partner Award, with the hope that we’ll keep finding new and interesting ways to collaborate.

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