Today we’d like to introduce you to Hayley Sayrs.
Hi Hayley, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My California story really began during a long conversation on a beach in Hawaii with my sister and my aunt. I said out loud for the first time that I wanted to build my life and career in California, especially Southern California. Something about this state had always lived in my imagination. It felt like the middle ground between my rural roots in Maui and my urban chapters on the East Coast, a place with more opportunity, more diversity, and more room to grow into the person I knew I could be. And honestly, I would not have had the courage to make that leap without the love and support of my extended family in Arizona and now California. They made the path feel less like a gamble and more like something I was meant to follow.
I had moved around a lot before and after that moment, and every place taught me something. The pattern I kept noticing was simple: the environments that felt most like home were always the diverse ones, communities with strong connections, less isolation, and a willingness to talk honestly about shared problems like poverty, health, and mental wellbeing. These were the places where people understood that no single silo can fix systemic issues alone. That realization became the compass for the work I do today.
I eventually landed at the USC Keck School of Medicine to study public health policy, not knowing I would graduate straight into a global pandemic. One of the most defining projects of my early career was Safe Haven, which provided emergency housing and support for women and children fleeing domestic violence when shelters were shut down. Watching public leadership, philanthropy, and community partners come together at lightning speed to build a real safety net during one of the hardest moments in recent history changed me. It showed me what is possible when collaboration is not treated as a buzzword but as a requirement.
Since then, my work has stretched across Southern California and beyond, from Los Angeles County to Orange County to San Diego. I have been lucky to build partnerships through referrals, word of mouth, and long term collaborations. A few highlights include:
• Los Angeles County Women and Girls Initiative (WGI) where I supported policy implementation, strategic communications, and advisory work focused on health equity and employing women to non-traditional roles. [https://ceo.lacounty.gov/wgi/]
• Women Entrepreneurs in partnership with Shop Local LA, where I helped uplift small businesses, especially women led, during a moment when local economies needed creative partnership the most. [https://shoplocal.la/]
• Los Angeles County Public Health Week, where I helped shape messaging that highlighted community health, resilience, and the cross sector work supporting women’s’ health and survivor owned businesses.
[http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/phweek/]
Along the way, I built Sayrs Consulting, a firm focused on social impact, public health strategy, and what I call social startups, entrepreneurial ideas rooted in equity and community wellbeing. At my core, I love helping governments, nonprofits, and private partners braid resources in ways that actually move the needle for vulnerable populations.
I come from humble beginnings, and my roots have stretched across many states. But California is home now. I am based in Beverly Hills, with family and friends across Orange County, and I have had the chance to collaborate with partners throughout Southern California, including San Diego, which has its own special energy and collaborative spirit.
My path has never been linear, but every move, every project, and every partnership has pushed me toward the same mission: strengthen the social fabric, restore community health, and build solutions that help people feel safer, more connected, and more hopeful. That is the work I want to keep doing, and the work that keeps me grounded here in California. [Sayrs.com]
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My path has never been linear, but every move, every project, and every partnership has pushed me toward the same mission: strengthen the social fabric, restore community health, and build solutions that help people feel safer, more connected, and more hopeful. That mission is not only professional for me, it is personal. A lot of the work I do comes from the belief that we need to transform our trauma, not just study it or tiptoe around it. We cannot afford to stay in a place where we are only affected or informed by trauma. We have to become led and transformed by it.
I see this disconnect all the time in public health and mental health. We have systems built around theories and experiments that often miss the lived realities of the people who need the most support. We apply cognitive solutions that work for neurotypical populations while expecting neurodiverse communities to just adjust. We rely on services and structures that were historically designed for able bodied men and then wonder why the outcomes are inequitable. If we let those old frameworks keep informing our work, then nothing will ever transform.
That is part of why I have started saying that we all need to move from being trauma informed to being trauma transformed. If I had listened to every message my past tried to hand me, I would have stayed small. My own story includes divorce, mixed roots, and long stretches of feeling unsupported or untethered. If I let that define me, I would have never started my first business idea, let alone my second or third. But every time I created something from scratch, every time I put an idea into the world that outlived the moment I was in, I felt myself expanding instead of contracting.
To know grief and trauma is, in many ways, to understand entrepreneurship. You learn how to build from nothing. You learn how to navigate uncertainty. You learn how to take risks that your past might tell you to avoid. And for me, those early family pain points became fuel. They pushed me to build things that create connection, impact, and a sense of belonging that I did not always have growing up. Think global and act local was the rallying cry for my generation, and it stuck with me. On a good day, the work makes the whole world feel like home.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Sayrs Consulting grew out of my early work building what I now call Social Startups. One of my first ventures was a health education farmers market with the Trinity Market, followed by a K through 12 outreach partnership with Gardopia Gardens called the PEAS Project, raising awareness about pollinators and the pollinator-provided foods that nourish communities in South Central Texas. I later co founded Just Bee, a zero waste business in Phoenix, Arizona, which strengthened my commitment to rethinking sustainability, plastic use, and the health of our food systems. Each of these projects taught me how to build something sustainable and viable from the ground up, even when the systems around me were not set up to support it.
I have always worked at the intersection of community, public health, and social impact. I’ve served fresh food to families in East LA and worked with a team to identify the driving causes of social isolation and loneliness in some of our most vulnerable communities. I have also witnessed extremes visiting families living near landfills in Nicaragua, working on desert restoration projects in Southern Arizona, and even canoeing through the urban San Antonio River where someone had tossed a dead cow and we literally had to lift our canoe and walk around it. These are just some of the early experiences that taught me that our health and our environment are inseparable, and that the policies shaping our lives are often created far away from the people most impacted.
Rather than let trends and political discourse discourage me, I chose to continue building up my arsenal through education and hands-on experience working on large-scale projects that unite stakeholders around a common goal, from local food and child welfare to women’s health and economic development.
Today, Sayrs Consulting provides strategic support for social impact organizations, public agencies, and community-centered businesses. Our services include project management, program development, policy implementation, public relations, government relations, nonprofit development, and partnership building. What sets me apart is my ability to secure resources and leverage them well through partnerships that allow us to make progress on social issues that feel insurmountable alone. I have learned that the right collaboration can move mountains that individuals or single organizations cannot. We have helped dozens of NGO leaders and nonprofits get their start, created award-winning mentorship and internship programs, and supported first generation and international students entering fields like mental health, public health, business, and computer science.
In 2026, we will launch our Social Startup curriculum for K through 12 students and emerging entrepreneurs. The goal is to encourage budding social innovators to fail early, fail often, and keep going, because resilience and iteration are the lifeblood of meaningful social change.
Sayrs Consulting is built on a simple belief: collaboration is the most powerful tool we have for solving social problems. We are here to identify and leverage existing resources, and develop new projects, programs and services that ultimately create ecosystems where communities and the individuals working in them can thrive. That is what I want readers to know about our brand, our services, and the heart behind what we do.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Looking ahead, I see the social impact and Social Startup sector shifting in several important ways over the next five to ten years, and my own journey has been a roadmap for where this work needs to go. Like public health, this is an evolving field with new language and terminology, born out of the necessity to find creative ways to accomplish what has yet to be done or solved. From launching community-focused initiatives like a farmers market and the PEAS Project, to co-founding Just Bee and Sayrs Consulting, I’ve seen that traditional charity approaches and standard business models often miss opportunities to maximize social impact. They rarely capture the full value of mission-driven enterprises, the multiplier effect of reinvesting in communities, or the incentives that make sustainable social innovation possible.
One of the biggest shifts I see in public health and policy work is moving from trauma-informed approaches to trauma-transformed practices. Many programs still operate through observation and mitigation, but the next wave of impact work must be led by lived experience, resilience, and transformation.
Social Startups will continue to innovate around sustainability, reduce waste, and embed ethical, circular, and regenerative practices into their models from day one. The next generation will move beyond grant dependency toward public-private partnerships, sustainable services, and ventures that generate meaningful social impact. Social Startups is focused on building self-sustaining solutions while nurturing the leaders and organizations that carry them forward.
Being self-employed and leading social enterprises is not for the faint of heart. It takes hustle, resilience, and a strong sense of purpose. But when you find your true north and surround yourself with the right people, there is nothing you cannot accomplish. I have seen it time and again. My experiences continue to inform how I build, guide, and inspire Social Startups and the collaborative ecosystem of leaders, organizations, and communities working together to create lasting change.
See note on pricing below:
Consulting rates and partnerships vary depending on project scope and subcontractor needs, but at the heart of Sayrs Consulting is a commitment to creating ecosystems where resources, talent, and innovation intersect to generate lasting impact. The industry is moving toward more intentional, values‑driven leadership, and we are proud to be at the forefront, helping to develop both the ideas and the leaders who will carry them forward. We are also helping usher in what is known as the collaborative economy, a system where organizations and communities work together, sharing resources and co‑creating solutions so that collective success replaces competition as the measure of impact. In this evolving landscape, we hope to continue co‑creating, and incubating new ideas that thrive because they are rooted in shared purpose.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Sayrs.Com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sayrsconsulting/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayleysayrs/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HayleySayrs
Image Credits
Joyston Menezes, Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office
