Ashley Barnes-Cocke

Senior Director, Direct Cash Transfers as Prevention

Ashley (they/them) has spent the last decade working at the intersection of youth homelessness and other caring systems in Washington State and nationally, with organizations such as the Mockingbird Society, YouthCare, the Minnesota Alliance with Youth, the MA Commission on LGBTQ Youth and A Way Home Washington. Most recently, they worked with incredible local communities to redesign their homelessness response systems with quality By-Name List (BNL) data, prevention, youth expertise, and racial and LGBTQ justice at the center, coaching the first two communities in WA to show measurable, sustained reductions in youth homelessness. Ashley is passionate about harnessing the creative power of communities to design systems and processes that actually work - because that is what young people deserve. Ashley is based in the Seattle area, and holds a Master of Education in Prevention Science and Practice from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, focusing on Youth Participatory Action Research and the intersections of adolescent trauma and liberatory education praxis.