Ashley was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon and continues to love all the Pacific Northwest has to offer. She went to undergrad in the lovely San Diego at USD, then spent a year as an Americorps member back in Oregon working with youth in a healthcare pipeline program. She then started her journey east and went to medical school in the frigid Rochester, MN. While there, she took a year off and got her Master’s in Public Health (with a focus on Maternal & Child Health) at UNC, where she met her now husband Justin and fell in love in the quaint town of Carrboro. After graduating from medical school, Ashley decided she hadn’t had enough of the Midwest winters and completed a residency in Med/Peds at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While there, she raised her two kitties (Sam & Cam), got married and had a baby girl named Ava.
Her interest in Palliative Care began in medical school where she found herself drawn to the challenging, intense, emotionally powerful, and significant interactions with patients and families surrounding end of life issues. This interest continued during residency during electives in Palliative Care on both the pediatric and adult sides. While in training, Ashley spent a month in Uganda doing a Palliative Care needs assessment and developing culturally appropriate palliative care guidelines for the Bwindi Community Hospital. Ashley’s interests in Hospice & Palliative Medicine include outpatient palliative medicine, global palliative care, young adults with serious illness, and sickle cell disease. She completed her ACGME fellowship in 2021 and this year is excited to be in the role of Advanced Clinical Fellow where she is spending time seeing both oncology and non-oncology patients in both the inpatient and outpatient settings as well as working on projects incorporating her interests in advance care planning and innovative models of outpatient palliative medicine for non-oncology patient populations.
Ashley’s interests include spending time with family – whom she convinced to move to NC from Oregon (though she is sure the grandbaby helped), swimming, reading books for pleasure, trying out new recipes and traveling the world. She loves to meet new people and have new experiences and absolutely loves the field of palliative medicine.
