Ashley Edwards

Why organisations work with Ashley Edwards

• She has built, funded, and scaled a care model specifically for the populations most wellbeing strategies fail to reach, and can translate that design logic into enterprise benefits and DEI programmes.
• MindRight is one of the few mental health platforms to make a non-clinical, text-based coaching service Medicaid-reimbursable, a proof point leaders can use to argue for culturally responsive care inside their own benefits stack.
• She is the first Black woman founder in New Jersey to raise over $1M in venture capital, which gives her an unusually credible voice on what it takes to back and build underrepresented leaders.
• As the inaugural Visiting Social Entrepreneur at Stanford GSB’s Center for Social Innovation, she brings a practitioner view sharpened by coaching the next wave of founders, not a consulting framework.
• She speaks from inside the problem: an operator running payroll, payer contracts, and clinical safety decisions, not a commentator.

Biography highlights

• Founder and CEO of MindRight Health, a venture-backed mental health startup delivering text-message coaching for underserved youth, with Medicaid-reimbursable pathways.
• First Black woman founder in New Jersey to raise over $1M in venture capital.
• Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur; named by Forbes among “Healers” shaping the next century.
• Inaugural Visiting Social Entrepreneur, Center for Social Innovation, Stanford Graduate School of Business.
• MBA and MA in Education, Stanford University (Miller Social Change Leadership Award); BA in Economics, Yale University.
• Previous platforms include Aspen Ideas, US Chamber of Commerce, Google, the WNBA, Harvard Business School, Stanford, and Yale; work covered in ELLE, Business Insider, and Inc.

Biography

Most young people in underserved communities never touch the clinical mental health system. They text. MindRight Health was built around that fact. Founded by Ashley Edwards in 2019 after she watched her students in Newark carry untreated trauma into school every day, the company delivers non-clinical mental health coaching by text, meets users where they already are, and has engineered its service to be reimbursed by Medicaid and commercial payers.

That design choice is where the organisational lesson sits. Benefits and wellbeing programmes built for a narrow group of users rarely work for everyone else. MindRight’s published retention and usage data with BIPOC youth, which exceed industry benchmarks, make a concrete argument for culturally responsive, preventative care as the first line of support, not the fallback.

Edwards brings the credentials to be heard by serious buyers. An MBA and MA in Education from Stanford, where she received the Miller Social Change Leadership Award, and a BA in Economics from Yale. She is the first Black woman founder in New Jersey to raise over $1M in venture capital, one of a small group to have done so in the United States, and serves as the inaugural Visiting Social Entrepreneur at Stanford GSB’s Center for Social Innovation, coaching a new cohort of social impact founders.

For leaders responsible for employee wellbeing, DEI, and benefits strategy, her value is practical. She has made the trade-offs between clinical rigour, cultural fit, affordability, and scale, and she can explain, with numbers, what it takes to reach the workforce a wellbeing policy is supposed to serve.

Key speaking topics

• Mental health in the workplace
• Employee wellbeing and benefits design
• Health equity and access to care
• Inclusive leadership and DEI strategy
• Social entrepreneurship and venture-backed impact
• Digital health and care delivery innovation
• Building and funding underrepresented founders

Ideal for

• CHROs, Heads of Benefits, and Chief Wellbeing Officers redesigning mental health support for a multigenerational, multicultural workforce.
• Chief Diversity Officers and DEI leads connecting wellbeing strategy to equity outcomes.
• Healthcare payers, providers, and employer coalitions evaluating non-clinical, preventative, culturally responsive care models.
• Foundations, investors, and corporate venture teams backing social impact and health equity founders.

Audience outcomes

• A sharper picture of why current mental health benefits fail the employees who most need them, and what design choices close that gap.
• A working understanding of how non-clinical, digital, culturally responsive care models fit alongside clinical pathways inside a benefits strategy.
• Specific evidence from MindRight’s payer partnerships and retention data that leaders can use to pressure-test their own wellbeing and DEI investments.
• A direct view from an operator-founder on what it takes to fund, build, and scale services for underrepresented populations.