About

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. A Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience, she is currently most interested in monitoring social impacts of AI and big tech legal battles. She has contributed investigative reporting to major outlets, including Teen Vogue, National Geographic, The Boston Globe, and Frontline, and served as fact-checker for Scientific American and Undark Magazine.

Ashley has a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Florida and a master’s in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her investigative reporting on policy failures to prevent domestic and sexual violence was funded by Knight Science Journalism and the National Geographic Society. Wedlocked, an in-depth five-part Teen Vogue series on child marriage in the US, has been cited by lawmakers in states that later ended or curtailed the exploitative practice. Other reporting tracking authoritarian efforts to criminalize VPNs and silence Iranian protestors was featured in an anthology from Saqi Books. Additionally, her reporting on the impact of inefficient Border Patrol strategy at the US-Mexico border on the endangered Sonoran pronghorn was featured in a 2024 nature book from Atlas Obscura.

She has also served as associate editor of Orlando Weekly, where her music criticism received honors from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. As a music journalist, she contributed to Chicago Review Press books on Curtis Mayfield and Arthur Briggs. When she’s not buried in a mound of research studies and legal documents, she enjoys hiking with her mutt, inhaling poetry, digging for records, and thrifting for vintage science books.

Email Ashley.

Selected stories