A Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, Ash began to get involved in education in college, when she volunteered as an America Reads tutor and spent a summer teaching with Breakthrough Collaborative. Now she has published — with Dr. Gary Ritter — a study of the positive effects of the El Dorado Promise when comparing those students with their nearby peers.

Ashe graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2008 with a B.A. in Comparative Literature. After graduation, she joined the Miami Teaching Fellows, a subsidiary of The New Teacher Project. She taught seventh- and eighth-grade Advanced and Gifted Language Arts in a public middle school with a fine arts magnet program. After teaching, she returned to her hometown of Fayetteville, Ark., to serve as a co-coordinator of Apples in the Classroom, a program that teaches nutrition and healthy living skills to elementary school students.

Ash also serves as a communications officer for the Fayetteville-based Champions for Kids, an initiative devoted to seeing children reach their maximum potential.