Ashley Burnside is a senior policy analyst with the public benefits justice team at CLASP. She specializes in refundable tax credits, including the Child Tax Credit, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance program. She also focuses on disability policy issues and increasing access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for college students with low incomes who face barriers to accessing higher education. She has been quoted in numerous media outlets including the Washington Post, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Marketplace with NPR, and CBS.

Prior to joining CLASP, Ashley was a research assistant on the family income support team at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities where she focused on TANF. In this role, Ashley helped write annual papers, provided state-specific resources to partners, managed communications efforts for the team, and helped plan a TANF advocate’s conference. Ashley also was a Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center. As a Hunger Fellow, she worked at a local food pantry in Denver, Colorado where she registered food pantry clients to vote and at RESULTS in Washington, D.C. where she researched refundable tax credits and the racial wealth gap. Ashley also was a Pedro Zamora Public Policy Fellow at AIDS United and has worked in LGBTQ advocacy previously.

Ashley received her bachelor of arts degree in social theory and practice from the University of Michigan and wrote an honors thesis on the LGBTQ rights movement. She graduated magna cum laude and was a Point Foundation Scholar.