For the past decade, Dara Ashley has held leadership roles across her academic and professional life, always in service of creating opportunity and paying it forward. A Dallas native, she began at Howard University, where the university's deep commitment to its community shaped how she saw her own. Through the MET Choice program, she mentored high-school girls attending an alternative school. That experience connected her with young people from many different backgrounds and confirmed the passion that would follow her everywhere. She loves showing up for students.

She carried that passion to Towson University, where she earned her master's degree in science and kept mentoring. Every Friday afternoon, she led a 6th-grade science class in the Baltimore City school district, opening each session with a hands-on experiment and closing it with a conversation about what those students could become.

Today, Dara works as a biomedical researcher, building a career in the very fields her students are working toward. But after graduate school, she missed connecting with young minds. So she built a way back to them and founded The Dara Ashley Foundation to make a lasting impact through new opportunities. The foundation offers scholarships, one-on-one mentorship, and leadership development for underrepresented college students standing where she once stood.