With experience as an educator, school leader, and entrepreneur, Ashley Sarver is the founder and Head of School at Eclipse Academy. Ashley works closely with each family to understand their values, needs, and academic aspirations, in order to design custom academic solutions that center the learner’s experience.

At Eclipse, Ashley leads enrollment, staffing, program development, operations, and community outreach. She works closely with Casey Hollister, our Director of Education, to develop discovery-based coursework and oversee all learning and teaching.

Ashley was born and raised in the Appalachian foothills of Athens, Ohio, where she attended Ohio University concurrent with high school. She graduated early at age 20 from Boston University with a B.S. in Journalism and Political Science. Soon after, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to teach elite test-prep courses, and soon after landed her dream gig as a teacher of English, social studies, and photography at a pioneering middle-and-high school, School for Independent Learners, specializing in 1-1 and small-group learning.

There Ashley served for six years in diverse roles: Teacher, Department Chair, Course Designer, Guidance Counselor, Accreditation Coordinator, Assistant Director, and Director. After helping to double the enrollment of the school, Ashley was recruited by Fusion Academy in 2013 to launch a new Bay Area campus in Marin, CA. As the founding Head of School, Ashley launched the campus in the fall of 2014 with five teachers and eight students, and doubled or tripled enrollment annually. By 2018, Fusion Marin had grown to 35+ staff and 250+ students. Within just a few years, her campus had become one of the top three performing campuses among 50+ campuses nationally, winning awards for exceeding growth targets and for parent and staff loyalty (NPS).

In her five rewarding years at Fusion Academy, Ashley learned how to launch, accredit, and grow a successful private school. Passionate about coaching herself and others, Ashley also became a Certified High Performance Coach in February of 2018.

Teaching and coaching aside, for Ashley nothing is more thrilling than connecting with people over ideas and designing solutions to challenging problems. For 15+ years she’s partnered with academic organizations to create dynamic online coursework in the humanities and arts, helping students explore themes of culture, identity, history, and the future. For instance, Ashley was recruited by Bill Gates’ think tank bgC3 to help design, accredit, and pilot a new blended-learning course, The Big History Project. This innovative, open-source, award-winning online coursework integrates history and science as it teaches high school students to view human history as part of a broader historical narrative.

In June of 2018, Ashley moved on to launch her own school, Eclipse Academy. Ashley is eager for Eclipse to serve students everywhere, with a pay-as-you-go tuition model and sessions across all time zones, from California to Singapore. Her mission is to make elite 1-to-1 education accessible to as many learners as possible, at home and around the world.

In the spirit of pluralism, it fills Ashley’s heart to headquarter Eclipse Academy in her hometown of Athens, Ohio, with the goal of expanding access to meaningful learning and work in Southeastern Ohio and beyond, reaching anyone overlooked in our struggling systems.

Learn more and connect with Ashley on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ashleysarver