Commissioner Staci Cain has served the Commonwealth for more than 25 years in multiple agency and departmental roles. After graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in Business Administration, she joined the Disability Determinations Services team (DDS) in Lexington in 1991.  She held multiple roles within the agency before retiring in 2009.   After her retirement from the public sector, Commissioner Cain formed her own disability firm, Disability Advocates of the Bluegrass where she continued to represent and serve some of the most vulnerable in our Commonwealth.  Commissioner Cain was called back to public service as the DDS Administrator in 2014 and she began serving as the Deputy Commissioner for the DIS in 2020 until she was appointed Commissioner for the DIS in 2024 . 

Commissioner Cain brings a wealth of experience to her position, including the implementation and assistance of numerous large-scale departmental and agency-wide projects. These include the initiation of teleworking practices during the global pandemic for both DDS and Child Support Enforcement (CSE) programs, the migration to new program management software for the DDS.  Commissioner Cain also secured critical federal hiring authority for the DDS program and obtained the first significant pay increases for DDS staff in decades, reducing agency attrition to 9% while achieving the third best case processing time in the nation.  As DDS Administrator, she also worked alongside the Social Security Administration's Regional Office to attain federal funding and approval for a newly renovated DDS office in Louisville. She has extensive knowledge and experience with both federal and state budgeting operations.