Bio
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson attended East Tennessee State University, majoring in English and minoring in African and African American Studies. She has served in positions of leadership for many organizations including being the former Organizational Liaison for the Initiative for Clean Energy at ETSU, former vice-president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, past president of the Black Affairs Association and the Rho Upsilon Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She is a past student representative on the ETSU Race Relations Dialogue Taskforce and the President’s Council on Cultural Diversity, the ETSU Sustainability Committee and served on the Planning Committee as a student site leader for ETSU’s Alternative Spring Break Program. Ash-Lee has also been an active member of LGBTieS, the Alpha Theta Chapter of Iota Iota Iota (Tri-Iota), and is a co-founder of the Progressive Student Alliance at ETSU. She has extensive knowledge of the use of community organizing and is a former staff member of the Chicago SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) History Project. She is a past member of the United Students Against Sweatshops National Coordinating, Political Education and Collective Liberation Committees. Additionally she is a long-time activist working around issues of community empowerment, environmental destruction, mountaintop removal mining, and environmental racism in central and southern Appalachia, and has served on the National Council of the Student Environmental Action Coalition. Ash-Lee is currently a staff organizer for United Campus Workers, Tennessee’s only union for higher education employees, a member of Greater Tucker Missionary Baptist Church, a proud member and organizer with Concerned Citizens for Justice and is an active board member of the Highlander Education and Research Center. She is a 27 year old, Affrilachian (Black Appalachian), working class womyn, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee.
