Ashley E. Harding, MA, is Founder and Managing Director of Three Degrees, a national consulting practice that partners with schools and districts to design and implement sustainable systems for family engagement, leadership development, and community partnership. She advises executive teams on strategy, alignment, and capacity-building to ensure engagement is embedded at the systems level—not treated as an initiative.

A fourth-generation educator and Los Angeles native, Ashley holds a B.S. from the University of Southern California and an M.A. in Child Development from Tufts University, with additional study in education reform at NYU and as a Graduate Fellow in the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact program.

Over the past decade, Ashley has led large-scale engagement strategies across national networks of schools serving more than 6,000 students, rebuilding infrastructure grounded in trust, shared leadership, and equity. As former Director of External Engagement for one of the nation’s largest charter networks, she oversaw cross-functional systems impacting families, staff, and community stakeholders. Her work operationalizes Dr. Karen Mapp’s Dual Capacity-Building Framework—strengthening the capability, connection, cognition, and confidence of both families and educators to lead together.

Ashley’s research on systemic disparities affecting Black and Latino students has been co-authored with Dr. James Jennings of Tufts and Harvard University, and her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal.

She serves as President of the Board for the Black Educators Advocates Network, is a member of CHADD’s National Board of Directors, and Co-Chair of CHADD’s National Education Committee. She maintains that families are not participants in education systems—they are co-leaders in their design and success.