Ashley Garner

Ashley Garner serves as a senior program associate for Higher Learning.

Prior to joining Mellon, Ashley worked as a policy analyst for the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, an antipoverty, policy, and advocacy nonprofit, focusing on social safety net supports and health access. She has also held roles in higher education administration with the Student Access and Educational Equity division at Rutgers University, where she worked extensively on barriers to academic success for first-generation, low-income, previously incarcerated, and historically unrepresented college students.

She holds a BA in comparative literature from Rutgers University – New Brunswick and an MA in sociology from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, where she is also a doctoral student.