Healthcare administration at the intersection of corporate strategy and human advocacy — read through the methods of medical anthropology.
I build the administrative infrastructure of healthcare — and insist it stay answerable to the people it is built for.
Across a decade inside managed-care organizations, a major hospital network, and a pandemic-era diagnostic lab, that conviction has held. My method is anthropological before it is corporate: foundational fieldwork on how adolescents and caregivers actually understand their own health became the lens I now bring to operations, quality improvement, and strategy as a Doctor of Business Administration candidate.
Each throughline — and the institutions behind it — appears as a node, with lines tracing what connects to what: the methods and commitments that recur across the work. Select a node to open its record, or read the complete archive in the Register below.
The relational map is built for a wider screen. On mobile, tap the connections inside each record to explore the same web — or read the full archive in the Register below.
The same record, read in a line instead of a web — arranged as an archive, grouped into series, each entry with a reference number and provenance. Series 0 holds the formation the rest of the work proceeds from.
Concentration in healthcare administration; in progress. Applied Doctoral Project in development, carrying the field methods of RES-01 into questions of healthcare delivery and implementation. National & Global Alumni Scholarship, Indiana Wesleyan University, 2026.
Conferred December 2024, 4.0 GPA. Capstone: a strategic analysis of Laboratory Corporation of America — catalogued at MS-01.
Concentration in medical anthropology. Qualitative and mixed-methods field training, including computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) — the methodological foundation for RES-01 and RES-02. Life-Health Sciences Internship Scholarship, IU School of Medicine, Division of Adolescent Medicine, 2013 — the funded appointment behind RES-01, under Mary A. Ott, MD, MA. Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Institute (MURI) Scholarship, Center for Research and Learning, 2012 — the funded appointment behind RES-02.
Concentration in medical humanities and health studies; conferred concurrently with EDU-03 in December 2015. Together the two degrees pair the interpretive methods of anthropology with the structural analysis of sociology — the combination the work in this archive runs on. Top 100 Student, Office of Alumni Relations, 2013, for undergraduate excellence in academics, leadership, and community engagement. Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society, 2011–2015.
Certification in research ethics and the protection of human subjects, held since the fieldwork at RES-01.
Subject-matter expert and coordinator supporting case managers and RNs; managing sensitive clinical data, member correspondence, and authorization review.
Targeted analysis of administrative bottlenecks and strategic interventions to raise delivery standards in a Fortune 500 environment.
Coordinated interdepartmental workflows and optimized administrative resource allocation.
Established foundational data-integrity protocols and administrative compliance across a major university health network.
High-volume diagnostic-kit assembly and logistics through the apex of the pandemic response — the empirical bedrock of the MBA capstone, a strategic analysis of Labcorp.
A funded appointment in the Division of Adolescent Medicine under Mary A. Ott, MD, MA, then Professor of Pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine, examining health literacy and adolescent capacity to consent. Mixed-methods field research under the medical anthropology training in EDU-03: in-person interviews and field surveys conducted in Indianapolis-area high schools, qualitative coding of interview transcripts, and data management in REDCap — examining how adolescents and caregivers understand and act on health information rather than how the system reports they do. Findings presented as a research poster at an academic symposium, April 2013.
A funded appointment under the Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Institute. Developed laboratory and research methodologies, culminating in a research poster presented at the Center for Research and Learning Summer Poster Symposium, 2012.
Vocational instruction in healthcare and business administration, translating corporate clinical experience into career readiness for young adults.
The same archival logic as the register — grouped into series, each entry with a reference number and provenance — turned to the writing itself.
A full strategic audit of the diagnostics and drug-development company Labcorp — financial ratio and WACC analysis, PESTEL, Porter's Five Forces, VRIO, and SWOT — resolving into three forward strategies: disciplined globalization, social entrepreneurship measured by profits, planet, and people, and accessible pricing for preventative testing. Its through-line is that efficiency and acquisition alone can't sustain a healthcare company; culture, relationships, and patient access have to be designed into the strategy.
Authored essays from Ashley's doctoral work — in preparation for release.
Selected articles and essays across national and industry outlets — being catalogued for the archive.
My doctoral work refines strategic management for the systemic problems healthcare keeps reproducing — beginning from the conviction that a strategy is only as sound as the frontline reality it answers to.
That conviction was earned literally. When COVID-19 overwhelmed the country's testing capacity, I stepped onto the floor of Labcorp's Indianapolis lab as relief — the system needed hands. Assembling high-volume diagnostic kits through the apex of the response was humanitarian before it was academic; it became the empirical bedrock of my MBA capstone — a strategic analysis of Labcorp — and the spine of everything since.
Where that leads next is a narrower question, and an anthropological one: not whether a policy is sound, but what happens to a person when it arrives. A decade in provider data, quality improvement, and authorization review has given me a close view of where sound interventions come apart in delivery — and that gap has a field. My doctoral project is taking shape toward implementation science, and I'm open to collaborations across implementation and health services research, health equity, and community health: wherever operational data and qualitative method can be brought to the same problem.
It is the quality of relationships, not the number of employees, that demonstrates [a company's] values and capacity for transparent leadership. — MBA capstone · strategic analysis of Labcorp
Her capstone is a strategic analysis of a diagnostics company; she assembled diagnostic kits. Presenting her strengths as a panel result is native to that world — and the five below read as one disposition, and an anthropological one: learn a system, understand it through its history, develop the people inside it, and restore what's broken.
Note. CliftonStrengths® is a registered trademark of Gallup, Inc. The theme names are Gallup's; any descriptions on this site are Ashley's own account of how each shows up in her work, not Gallup's language.
Continuing education, professional network, and serialized writing on operations, advocacy, and health research.