Sarah has her BA in Political Science from Nazareth College and her MSW from Syracuse University. Sarah has worked for Onondaga County in Syracuse, NY for the approximately 16 years. She has worked in both the Department of Children and Family Services and the Department of Social Services. She started working as a caseworker in child welfare, working directly with children that were in foster care, providing case management support to the children, biological parents and also foster parents/relative
caregivers. From there, she moved on to work as the Community Liaison for Child Welfare. In this role she worked connecting community partner agencies and CPS together. She also provided training and support to new caseworkers within child welfare. She also worked for several years as the Personnel Director for DCFS.

In early 2020, Sarah was hired to work on a special poverty reduction pilot program in DSS. Sarah Merrick, the Commissioner, had worked hard to develop and get permission to launch this program specifically with young families on temporary assistance aiming to help them gain economic mobility. The launch of this program was delayed a bit due to the COVID 19 pandemic but was able to fully launch in April of 2022. Sarah is currently working hard to develop and run this program since that time.