Ashley Coates

About

Ashley van Edema (Coates) is a PhD candidate in Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston and is in the final stages of completing her dissertation, titled: Systems Thinking and Systems Change in Disability Inclusive Development: Leveraging USAID’s Disability Policy. Most recently, she worked with a team of researchers to assess disability inclusion across more than 40 United Nations entities, and contributed to the first phase of research on a study evaluating the use of data for decision making for Children on the Move. Ashley also co-led the development of the 2017 National Council on Disability’s Foreign Policy and Disability report and has co-authored articles on previous research, including a pilot study evaluating disability inclusion at the World Bank and a training program for parents of children with Autism in Bangladesh. In addition to her research and consultancies, Ashley has taught courses on Human Rights, Poverty and Wealthand Leadership and Management and Research Methods at Northeastern University, and Social Justice, Race and Gender Issuesand Diversityat Fisher College in Boston, MA. Previously, she worked directly with children with disabilities and their families providing transition and special education related support, and oversaw programming at the Federation for Children with Special Needs and the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress. Ashley was a 2014 LEND (Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities) fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, and has a MS in Organizational Leadership and a BA in Education, both from Southern New Hampshire University.