The following excerpt is from a narrative that initially ran within the winter 2024 concern of the W&M Alumni Magazine. Read the full version on the journal web site. – Ed.

For girls who aspire to high-level management roles, participation in sports activities offers a stable basis. According to an EY report, 94% of ladies holding what are often called C-suite positions — chief govt officer, chief working officer, chief monetary officer — are former athletes, with 52% having performed at a college degree. Time spent on taking part in fields and courts fosters a powerful work ethic, willpower, a dedication to teamwork and a aggressive spirit, the report states.

Athletics can assist degree the taking part in discipline for girls in enterprise environments. A United Nations report on girls and gender fairness notes that “women in sport leadership can shape attitudes toward women’s capabilities as leaders and decision-makers, especially in traditional male domains.”

To be taught extra in regards to the connection between excelling at sports activities and management within the office, we requested a number of William & Mary alumnae athletes turned enterprise and nonprofit executives to share their tales. Read extra about alumnae making energy strikes within the enterprise and nonprofit sectors at magazine.wm.edu/womenathletes.

Mashea Mason Ashton ’96, M.A.Ed. ’97

At the Digital Pioneers Academy in Southeast Washington, D.C., faculty founder and CEO Mashea Ashton is sporting her regular Wednesday apparel: a green-and-gold William & Mary sweatshirt. After all, Wednesday is College Day, and why wouldn’t the previous Tribe soccer workforce captain signify her beloved alma mater?

Preparing college students from low-income, working-class households to attend faculty and pursue careers in pc science is the mission behind the general public constitution faculty. Since opening in 2018 with 120 sixth graders, the academy has grown to embody two campuses with 600 college students in grades 6-11. Next yr, its first seniors will graduate.

“I believe that every student rises to the level of your expectations,” Ashton says. “But data shows that for kids of color, particularly kids who live in the most under-resourced parts of the country, their educational outcomes are far below their potential. The big question I keep chasing is how to get more kids of color to achieve their highest potential by going to college and having successful careers.”

The query first got here into focus when Ashton was instructing in Williamsburg whereas working towards her grasp’s diploma in particular schooling, after incomes a bachelor’s diploma in sociology and elementary schooling. One of her college students was a fifth-grade boy whose habits was getting him into bother. A trainer on employees on the faculty advised Ashton to not fear about him: “He’s just going to wind up in jail like his father.”

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, gosh, this can’t be true. There must be something else out there for him,’” Ashton says.

The story of how she got here to attend William & Mary — and uncover her life’s mission — begins with athletics. As quickly as Mashea and her twin sister, Michele Mason ’96, entered kindergarten, their mom, Brenda Mason, began planning for the ladies to go to varsity. Neither she nor her husband, who served within the navy, had a school diploma, but it surely was her dream to see her daughters pursue larger schooling.

While volunteering with the Willingboro, New Jersey, faculty system, Mrs. Mason advised one of many lecturers that her daughters wanted to obtain scholarships and he or she thought excelling at basketball is perhaps the easiest way for them to perform that objective.

“This teacher told my mom, ‘Don’t put them in basketball, put them in soccer,’” Ashton says. “I think the idea was that there aren’t many Black girls who play soccer. If they’re really good, they will stand out and they’ll have more opportunities to get scholarships.”

So the twins began taking part in membership soccer at age 5, they usually liked it. About a decade later, their workforce, the Willingboro Strikers, turned nationwide champions for the underneath 16 age group. William & Mary was not on their radar whereas rising up in southern New Jersey, however they met John Daly, then the W&M girls’s head soccer coach, at a Women and Girls in Soccer event, and he advised their mom the ladies ought to take into consideration going to William & Mary. His suggestion was bolstered once they heard about W&M’s repute for each high-level teachers and athletics from considered one of their membership soccer coaches whose little one had attended the college.

“We said, ‘It’s our dream school. That’s where we want to go,’” Ashton says. “It’s the only school we applied to.”

She credit her expertise as an athlete with honing her management abilities and instructing her learn how to overcome disappointments and setbacks. She recollects that after beginning most video games as a freshman, she misplaced her spot within the lineup when a brand new participant got here within the subsequent yr.

“Why is a freshman taking a starting position?” Ashton requested Daly. He advised her that he made the choice based mostly on his evaluation of how the gamers’ abilities would contribute to the workforce’s success, and inspired her to maintain enhancing as an athlete.

“Competition pushed me to work harder,” she says. “By my junior year, I was starting. Senior year, I was picked to be captain. A big part of that was input from the coach. He reinforced that if you work hard, good things will happen.”

As she started her profession in schooling, she carried together with her the aggressive spirit from the soccer workforce, together with classes of resilience.

“I understood working hard and getting results from an athletics perspective, but the same perspective can apply to anything,” she says. “If you set your mind to a big goal, you work hard, you put in the effort and you believe all failure or difficulty is just feedback, you can achieve anything.”

After beginning out as a classroom trainer, Ashton quickly moved into management roles. At age 26, she turned a founding member of the Black Alliance for Education Options, a nonprofit that advocated for elevated selections for low-income and working-class households. She served on the board with Cory Booker, a U.S. senator who was then the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Booker later recruited her as CEO for a $50 million fund that was put aside for constitution colleges in Newark. Ashton additionally has served as govt director for constitution colleges within the New York City Department of Education and as nationwide director of recruitment for the Knowledge Is Power Program.

“I didn’t pick charter schools,” she says. “I picked leadership roles based on how to have an impact to serve kids.”

The thought of constitution colleges resonated together with her partly due to private expertise. Her dad and mom had moved Mashea and Michele out of their zoned public faculty once they have been going to be held again to repeat kindergarten. They transferred to a non-public Catholic faculty, the place they obtained further tutorial assist and have been in a position to meet up with their friends.

“I believe families deserve as many high-quality choices as possible,” she says.

Working with constitution colleges enabled Mashea to use an entrepreneurial method to schooling, finally resulting in the founding of Digital Pioneers Academy (DPA). About 10 years in the past, she and her husband, Kendrick Ashton ’98, moved from New York City to the Washington, D.C., space, the place his household has lived for generations, as he was planning to launch The St. James sports activities complicated with buddy and enterprise associate Craig Dixon ’97, J.D. ’00.

Mashea has reconnected together with her alma mater as a present W&M Foundation trustee, and former For the Bold D.C. Regional Campaign board member and W&M Alumni Association board member.

Originally, she wished to open a center faculty that might assist put college students on a path towards faculty and careers. Then she learn studies saying demand for folks educated in pc science was anticipated to far outpace the availability, and that gave her the inspiration for the academy.

“I said, ‘Let’s figure out how to close this gap,’” Ashton says. “We want our scholars to be part of creating in the digital economy.”

Taking the varsity from idea to opening was a significant activity, and challenges proceed. After 4 of the academy’s college students died from gun violence in incidents outdoors of faculty over the past tutorial yr, Ashton started to rethink how DPA operates.

“What I’m realizing is that we can’t achieve our mission for all of these kids to go off to four-year colleges and universities and thrive in 21st-century careers unless we are also thoughtful about addressing youth violence and gun violence in D.C.,” she says.

Part of the varsity’s response was to launch a soccer workforce, which completed its first season this previous fall. Additional sports activities are additionally being added: ladies and boys volleyball, basketball and soccer. These actions give college students one thing to do within the after-school hours and supply a strategy to interact households and construct a way of group.

Meanwhile, Ashton retains her workforce centered on Digital Pioneers Academy’s mission, typically drawing on her athletics expertise.

“We have a 15-minute huddle at the start of every day with the whole staff. It’s the moment our team loves the most,” she says. “We talk about the play for the day and then we go try to win. Our mindset is we have to go 1-0 every single day. We’re not trying to win the championship in one day. We’re taking it one day at a time.”

Read the complete story, which incorporates Molly Ashby ’81, Katy Neumer ’07 and Jennifer “Jen” Tepper Mackesy ’91, on the journal website.

Tina Eshleman, University Marketing