Ashleigh
Cooper

As chief of staff at Raben, Ashleigh Cooper serves on the firm’s senior leadership team and partners with the president to advance organizational strategy, deepen leadership effectiveness, and support the firm’s continued growth. 

She leads firm-wide strategic planning and cross-functional initiatives, helping translate organizational priorities into action. Focused on organizational culture, equity-centered leadership, and transformation, Ashleigh fosters alignment across the leadership team and ensures Raben’s internal practices reflect its commitment to compassion, integrity, strategy, equity, and humor.

Across nearly two decades in mission-driven organizations, Ashleigh has worked as a systems thinker and relationship builder at the intersection of strategy, execution, and people. As the founder of Wheel Haus Collective, she provides executive coaching to leaders and helps organizations navigate growth and cultivate the culture and community that allow a mission to thrive. Previously, at What Works Cities, a Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative, Ashleigh served as a strategic thought partner to the executive director, leading strategy and operations and building the performance management systems that strengthened execution. As senior director of corporate partnerships at Management Leadership for Tomorrow, she led a portfolio of more than 30 corporate partners and advanced talent pipeline initiatives that placed more than 850 diverse, emerging leaders in internships and full-time roles. Earlier in her career, Ashleigh launched IBM’s first P-TECH school in Baltimore, Maryland, coordinating efforts across corporate partners, educational institutions, and internal teams, paving the way for what is now a nine-school network. Her broader experience includes global health security and health systems strengthening across sub-Saharan Africa with Management Sciences for Health, and U.S.-Africa health sector trade and investment with the Corporate Council on Africa.

Ashleigh holds a master’s degree in Social Work in Social Enterprise Administration from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Temple University. She is a Licensed Master Social Worker and an executive coach trained through iPEC. A native Washingtonian, Ashleigh is a global traveler and a ceramic artist who has been throwing on the wheel since 2012. Her time at the wheel offers much-needed grounding and creative renewal, reinforcing a truth that guides her work with leaders: before clay can hold its shape and outlast the hands that formed it, it must first be centered. The same is true for people, teams, and whole organizations.