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About Ashley

Ashley-Rose is an award winning Haitian-American educator, organizer, actress and award-winning poet from Boston, MA. She was honored by Mayor Marty Walsh with the OneIn3 Impact Award for being one of the most influential people under age 35 in Boston and in 2016 she was awarded Boston’s Extraordinary Woman Award for her work with within arts, education and community development in Boston. Most recently she was awarded 2017 National Poetry Award by the City Works Journal in San Diego, California. Her writing has been featured alongside collections and anthologies including, The Anthology of Liberation Poetry with greats such as Professor Hoagland and Black Arts Movement Co-Founder Askia Toure. This led to her delivering one of the first TEDx Talks in Boston based on her poem, “The Other Side of Ruggles”. Her poem, “Dark Skin Representative” was highlighted and featured by the American Repertory Theatre for their sold out play, The Black Clown, inspired by Langston Hughes.

After attending Northeastern, Ashley-Rose found success both on the page, and on the stage with acting. Her past storytelling and acting experience has led to her being featured on PBS Stories From the Stage and in productions such as Urban Fresh’s remake of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf, Having, where she played the lead role of Lady in Red. Wearing multiple hats, Ashley-Rose was also the lead organizer for the 2008 RoxVote Campaign when Barack Obama won his first presidency, and in 2015 she was hired as the Boston Organizer and Facilitator for the first Youth Lead the Change- Participatory Budgeting process in the United States. She currently works teaching Restorative Justice through the lens of arts and science for middle school students in BPS.