Interesting fact: Ashley learned the art of sheep herding from youth in the Andean mountains of Ecuador while volunteering at a Free The Children school.
Ashley began her career with Free The Children as a youth coordinator, working with youth and educators to support the Adopt a Village program. Most recently, as director of international trips for Leaders Today, Ashley led a team that provided over 1500 youth the opportunity to travel and volunteer across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Working with a team that was spread over many continents, Ashley comes with a wealth of knowledge about both the excitement and challenges that come when programs span a variety of continents, cultures, languages, and time zones.
A graduate of Mount Allison University, Ashley received an Honours degree in international relations. Her extensive travel experience across Latin America and Africa includes living in Ecuador and Cuba while studying community development, international politics and Spanish. Ashley has worked abroad with Free The Children projects, a women's cooperative and capacity building initiatives with indigenous communities in the Andes.
Inspirational youth from around the world have taught Ashley that education is changing the world every day. She left the small town of Estevan, Saskatchewan, at the age of 16 to travel to South Africa and volunteer at an orphanage, and has since felt connected to the struggles of youth around the world. She's deeply committed to numerous organizations that support educational initiatives and has devoted many hours to sponsoring refugees to attend Canadian universities, helping them adjust to university classes and a new country. Ashley also sits on the Board of Directors for Canadian Artists for African Aid which seeks to educate and inspire Canadian youth to create change through artistic projects such as the Song for Africa initiative.
In her spare time, Ashley loves to check out the food and cultural festivals in Toronto, play beach volleyball, scuba dive (she has dove to depths of 100 feet to explore shipwrecks in the Caribbean!), salsa dance and spend time camping by the ocean.