Ashani is a vice president and first ever director of NORC’s Center on Equity Research (CER).

Ashani is an experienced and award-winning social scientist with over 20 years conducting inclusive and equitable research, health communication, social marketing, public health, and public policy research, including rigorous evaluation of communication messages, campaigns, and initiatives to promote health equity. She blends her academic background in political science, political behavior, and public policy with years of work in health policy, public health, health marketing, communication, and evaluation. Ashani has expertise in participatory and deliberative models for engagement, engaging and recruiting marginalized/minoritized populations, culturally responsive and mixed methods research and evaluation. She presents her work at national conferences, is published in peer reviewed journals, and is a sought after thought leader and public speaker.

Ashani returned to NORC after serving as the Global Impact Team, Director of Public Policy Research and Monitoring, in McDonald’s Global Public Policy and Government Relations Center of Excellence. At McDonald’s, she led strategic planning to build McDonald’s public policy research function and was advisor to cross-functional, company teams leading Environmental Sustainability, Community Connection and Diversity promotion activities. While at McDonald’s she also directed social and traditional media monitoring and analysis, reputational risk and brand promotion research, campaign monitoring and measurement.

Ashani holds degrees from Hampton and Purdue University with continued studies on quantitative methods at the University of Michigan, and political science at Leiden University and the University of Chicago. She is adjunct faculty at Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health, and the President of the Society for Health Communication. She also serves on the Board for BLKHLTH and on the CDC’s Communications and Public Engagement Workgroup (CPEW), advising the Federal Advisory Committee to the Director, CDC, on communication with the public.