Ashley Carter

Founder and Principal, Pathfinder Strategies

Ashley Carter is the founder and principal of Pathfinder Strategies. She partners with states, sector intermediaries, and philanthropic organizations to build workforce strategies and systems that respond to real employer demand while expanding access and success for students and jobseekers. Her practice blends strategy development, systems design, and on-the-ground implementation, informed by more than two decades of experience across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Through Pathfinder Strategies, Ashley's engagements span the full arc of this work: providing multi-year technical assistance to statewide sector intermediaries, advising regional partnerships funded through the federal Good Jobs Challenge, mapping employer engagement across a state's education and workforce systems, co-leading a cross-state collaborative advancing employer leadership, shaping statewide workforce policy, and advising philanthropy on new workforce investments.

Before founding Pathfinder Strategies, Ashley was the founding chief operating officer of CareerWise Colorado, where she helped bring the organization's early vision to life and led efforts to scale youth apprenticeship across a range of industries — guiding growth strategy, building core operational systems, and supporting other states in launching programs through the formation of CareerWise USA.

Earlier in her career, Ashley advised Fortune 500 companies and philanthropic foundations at Boston Consulting Group; today she serves as an external advisor to McKinsey. In 2001, she founded Daring Girls, a nonprofit supporting girls' education and entrepreneurship training across East Africa — now more than 25 years old and recognized with UNESCO's 2022 Prize for Girls' and Women's Education.