Ashley Richardson

Ashley B. Richardson serves as the Children’s Funding Project’s Senior Manager of Emerging Funding Strategies where she leads and grows our work to identify local economic development opportunities and other innovative strategies to finance early childhood and youth programs and services. For the past decade, Ashley has worked in the public sector, developing expertise in local policy development, economic development strategies, and municipal budget & finance with a passion for enhancing the quality of life for children, caregivers, and the providers who serve them. She previously worked for the City of Austin where she advised elected officials on projects such as property tax exemptions for child cares that serve low-income families, a Voter Approved Children’s Fund with the Children’s Funding Project to expand access to child care and after school programs and increase wages for early childhood educators, the expansion of paid parental leave benefits for public sector employees, and workforce opportunities for students with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

Ashley holds a Master’s in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin and bachelor’s degrees in Feminist Studies and Global Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She resides in Austin, Texas where spends her free time hosting a music radio show, reading fiction, dancing to live music, and walking her dog through the trails of Central Texas.