Ashley C. Williams

Ashley C. Williams, Ed.D. is the Vice President of Programs where she leads the organization’s workforce strategy to expand the pipeline of qualified, diverse talent pursuing careers in early education. Dr. Williams lends decades of experience to her role as her work over the years is situated in the nexus of early learning, family engagement, higher education, and policy with a specific focus on early educators. She has worked in several roles in early care and education, including serving as a Jumpstart Corps Member and team leader where she started her ECE journey. She continued on to become a preschool teacher, Head Start center director, and early childhood teacher educator at the undergraduate and master’s levels at SF State. She is the former Associate Director of EDvance and served as the Senior Quality and Workforce Analyst for the San Francisco Office of Early Care and Education. Prior to returning to Jumpstart as a part of the organization’s leadership team, Dr. Williams was the Director of California Policy and Educator Engagement Programs for the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. Her professional work extends internationally as she co-led a study abroad service-learning program in ECE settings in South Africa and New Zealand. Dr. Williams is also a Policy Fellow at the National Black Child Development Institute. Overall, Dr. Williams’ daily work is rooted in contributing to early learning systems in ways that explicitly reveal, dissolve, and resolve systemic inequities that cause harm to children, families, and the educators that work with them- especially when they are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Dr. Williams earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership at SF State where she also earned her B.A. in Child and Adolescent Development and an M.A.Ed. with an emphasis on Early Childhood Education.