Carolyn Ash
Director of Student Leadership Development

Carolyn Ash was formerly the program director for the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN), a national coalition of 21 urban-suburban school districts across the country working to eliminate the gaps in achievement between their African American and Latino students and their White students.  As program director, Ms. Ash was involved in every area of the Network’s operations and programming, including proposal development, planning of national student and teacher conferences, and publication/resource development.

 Before joining MSAN in 1999, Ms. Ash served as the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL’s) A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE Institute in Chicago.  While in Chicago, Ms. Ash also worked in program and resource development at the Family Resource Coalition of America (FRCA), a national network of family support organizations.  At FRCA, she examined family support programs throughout the country and co-authored The Basics of Family Support:  A Guide for State Planners (And Others).  She also authored Working with African American Families:  A Guide to Resources.  Ms. Ash has also worked in the corporate sector as an account manager for Comdisco, Inc., a technology services company based in Rosemont, Illinois.

 Before moving to Chicago, Ms. Ash worked at the Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) in Los Angeles, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating young people about the importance of civic participation and community service.  During her tenure at CRF, Ms. Ash served as associate director of CityYouth L.A., a middle school program that integrates civic responsibility and service learning into schools’ core academic programs.  She also organized Youth Summit L.A., which brought together more than 600 high school students from the L.A. area to talk about how they could rebuild relationships between various groups following the civil unrest in Los Angeles in 1992.  Former L.A. Police Chief, Willie Williams, served as the keynote speaker.

 Ms. Ash has a master’s degree in education, with a specialization in curriculum development, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.  She is a native of Denver, Colorado.