Hi Penguins!! My name is Ashley Cooper and I am incredibly excited to be joining the Quincy community this Fall as a Resident Tutor! I grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Harvard College in 2021, where I jointly concentrated in Neuroscience and Anthropology, with a secondary in History of Science, and a Language Citation in French. As an undergraduate, I lived in Quincy House, so I am delighted to return to this phenomenal community!

On campus, I served as President of the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children, Co-Director of Indigo Peer Counseling, and Science Club for Girls, Co-President of Harvard Medical Humanities Forum, and of the Harvard Global Health Institute’s Student Advisory Committee. I also conducted psychiatric and social science research across Harvard and at McLean, as a Mellon Mays Fellow, and performed in several plays and musicals across the Agassiz Theatre, Farkas Hall, and the A.R.T.

This past year, I served as the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar and completed a Master’s degree in Health, Medicine, and Society at the University of Cambridge through the Harvard-Cambridge Scholarship. Currently, I am at Harvard Medical School pursuing a Master’s of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health. My research centralizes upon increasing equity in mental health care dispersal, and especially upon fostering increased accessibility to mental healthcare for the Black community. 

I am very passionate about mentorship, volunteering, health accessibility, art as a form of care, the medical humanities, and the destigmatization of mental health. In my free time, I enjoy theater, playwriting, writing poetry, reading, jazz music, and songwriting.

Feel free to ask me about fellowships, research opportunities, the intersection of medicine and the arts, theater, music, STEM, graduate school, classes, mental health, book recommendations, or anything else that may be on your mind! You can find me, my dog Prince, and cat Simba on the 6th floor of New Quincy. Looking forward to getting to know all of you this year!