Some leaders enter their field with a clearly defined ambition. Others arrive through a quieter calling, one shaped over time by observation, curiosity, and lived experience. In mental health, where outcomes are rarely shaped by individual effort alone, the most impactful leaders are often those who learn early to question existing structures rather than simply operate within them.
Ashley E. Poklar belongs to that second category. Her work reflects a sustained commitment to understanding not just people, but the environments that shape them, families, schools, institutions, and communities that quietly determine whether care heals or harms. Rather than distancing herself from the complexity of this work, she has chosen to remain close to it, grounding leadership decisions in human connection while navigating systems not always built with compassion in mind.
As Clinical Director at Sentinel Foundation, Ashley’s approach reflects a thoughtful progression from frontline engagement to system-level leadership. Her work integrates clinical practice, education, research, and community partnership into a unified philosophy, one that values dignity over efficiency, long-term impact over quick solutions, and shared ownership over performative care. Her story is not simply about professional advancement, but about redefining what responsible, human-centered leadership can look like inside complex systems.
A Journey Rooted in Curiosity, Systems, and Human Connection
Ashley E. Poklar’s path into psychology was never linear, nor was it carefully planned. It began, as many meaningful journeys do, with childhood curiosity. As a young girl, she remembers watching an episode of Reading Rainbow featuring Jane Goodall. Jane was immersed in nature, studying animals within the ecosystems they depended on. This image stayed with her. Ashley imagined herself in a similar life, studying animals while her future children ran barefoot through the jungle, growing up alongside curiosity, freedom, and connection.
That dream unraveled quietly when her family moved to a state without a zoology program, and out-of-state tuition became unattainable. What she could not yet articulate but would later understand clearly was that the dream had never been about animals alone. It was about ecosystems. About how environments shape behavior, how survival depends on safety and connection, and how individuals adapt to the conditions around them.
That curiosity followed her into teaching, where she encountered young people navigating fractured systems long before they had language for what they were experiencing. From there, she moved into counseling and eventually psychology, driven by a growing realization: individual struggles rarely exist in isolation. They are shaped by schools, families, legal structures, social expectations, and access to care.
Her early career in special education placed her in alternative high schools with students often labeled as ‘bad kids.’ Sitting across from them day after day, Ashley saw a different truth. These were not defiant or broken children. They were young people carrying unprocessed trauma, trying to survive environments that had failed to protect or understand them. Labels were easier than listening. Punishment was simpler than care.
Motherhood brought a moment of reckoning. Ashley realized she could not simultaneously be the parent she wanted to be and the teacher those students needed her to be. The realization was not rooted in inadequacy, but in honesty. Wanting to show up fully for both roles, she returned to school to pursue counseling.
During her internship at a juvenile detention center, she encountered the limits of institutional systems firsthand. When she advocated for more humane, trauma-informed treatment, she was told she ‘didn’t have the right letters’ after her name. Rather than silencing her, the moment clarified her direction. She understood that changing systems would require more than intention; it would require authority, fluency, and voice.
Ashley went on to earn a doctorate, becoming the first in her family to do so. Each milestone expanded her understanding of how schools, courts, families, and communities intersect to shape a child’s life. That systems-level awareness now informs every decision she makes as a Clinical Director.
At her core, her purpose remains simple and unwavering. She wants young people to feel seen. She wants families to feel supported rather than judged. She wants professionals to feel that their work matters. And she wants systems to stop adding harm on top of harm. Some days, she meets that vision with confidence. Other days, she falls short. Yet the purpose remains constant, expressed not only in mission statements, but in the small, daily decisions that define ethical leadership.
Integration Over Balance: A Living Leadership Model
Ashley does not describe her work as a careful balancing act between clinical leadership, research, teaching, and community engagement. Balance, she believes, implies symmetry, an idea that has never reflected her lived reality. Instead, she speaks of integration.
Integration allows her values to move fluidly across roles rather than being compartmentalized. Her background in psychology informs her parenting. Her experience as a mother deepens her teaching. Community engagement strengthens her research. Research sharpens her leadership. Each role feeds the others, creating a living ecosystem rather than isolated silos.
Clinical leadership keeps her grounded in real stories: the child who needs a trauma-informed placement, the caregiver searching for guidance, the frontline operator navigating crisis with limited resources. Research ensures programs are not only compassionate but sustainable. Teaching fosters humility, reminding her that the next generation of professionals is watching not just what is taught, but how the work is lived. Community engagement keeps her accountable to those who will live with the long-term impact of today’s decisions.
Central to this approach is co-creation. Ashley is deeply committed to building programs alongside the people who will use them. Whether training staff in East Africa on child-led interactions, supporting law enforcement partners in trauma-informed interviewing, or developing psychoeducational programming for youth in the United States, the aim remains consistent: to build communities of care capable of holding young people long after the crisis moment has passed.
When she imagines the future of mental health care, she does not envision abstract ideals. She envisions care grounded in dignity, flexibility, relationship, and humanity values lived out in everyday moments where trust is built, and healing begins.
Meaning, Trust, and Shared Ownership
Meaning-making sits at the center of Ashley’s clinical and organizational philosophy. Not in the sense of reframing pain to find positivity, but in understanding what an experience means to the person living it. Relationship-building makes that possible. Without safety, people do not hand over the most fragile parts of their stories.
In leadership, this philosophy translates into slowing down, asking better questions, and making decisions guided by values rather than authority. It also requires humility, the recognition that the most grounded ideas often come from those closest to the work. Therapists sitting with a child in crisis. Case managers who know a family’s history intimately. When teams help shape solutions, the work becomes more sustainable and aligned with real needs rather than assumptions.
Trust, Ashley believes, is built quietly over time. It lives in consistency, answering emails when promised, acknowledging mistakes without defensiveness, and following through. These moments matter more than any strategic framework.
Emotional safety does not mean avoiding discomfort. It means creating space where difficult truths can be spoken without fear of punishment or dismissal. When systems are built with people rather than for them, work transforms from a checklist into a shared mission. Accountability no longer needs to be imposed; it emerges naturally when communities feel ownership over their children’s futures.
Confronting Systemic Realities
One of the most complex challenges in youth mental health care is the expectation that children remain resilient within systems that change too slowly. Young people are taught coping strategies while remaining embedded in environments that are overwhelmed and under-resourced. Ashley has sat with children who are doing everything ‘right’ and still struggling because the systems around them are not designed for their realities.
Equally challenging is the field’s preference for rescue narratives over long-term care. Saving a child captures attention. Sustaining support over the years often does not. Without prevention and aftercare, many rescued youth face retraumatization and revictimization. Temporary interventions cannot erase structural vulnerability.
In response, Ashley’s leadership has shifted from focusing primarily on individual interventions to advocating for ecosystem-level change, working simultaneously with youth, families, professionals, and institutions. Solutions are co-created, not imposed, allowing lived experience to shape the work itself.
Curiosity, Ethics, and Staying Close to the Work
In a rapidly shifting field, Ashley stays grounded by staying curious. She reads widely, listens attentively, asks thoughtful questions, and pays close attention to what young people are actually experiencing rather than relying on headlines alone. She looks for patterns and connections, believing meaningful change often begins in overlooked spaces.
Remaining close to the work preserves ethical clarity. It is difficult to lose one’s grounding when regularly sitting with the people whose lives are directly shaped by professional decisions.
Milestones, Meaning, and Responsibility
Awards and recognitions hold nuanced meaning for Ashley. While they may appear as markers of success, her experience feels more like reaching one summit only to see another ahead. She celebrates achievements, but her attention quickly returns to unmet needs and emerging challenges.
Earning a doctorate as a first-generation college student remains deeply personal. Building a career that allows her to homeschool her children while staying connected to them is another. Yet beyond titles, her greatest pride comes from moments where she influences a single child’s life directly or indirectly.
She also acknowledges the practical importance of recognition. Awards open doors, amplify work, and create opportunities for partnerships that advance a shared mission: ensuring every child encountered has a genuine chance at safety, healing, and a future free from exploitation.
Integration, Parenthood, and Emotional Sustainability
Emotional well-being alongside significant responsibility is not a fixed achievement, but an ongoing practice. There are nights spent replaying difficult conversations and days when the weight of others’ stories feels overwhelming. Rather than striving for perfection, Ashley focuses on living her values in small, tangible ways: meaningful work, spontaneity, and community.
She pays close attention to her nervous system, responding early with brief moments of regulation rather than waiting for idealized self-care. When the work feels heavy, she returns to two principles: live your values and lead with love. One reminder she holds close is Winnicott’s belief that ‘good enough parenting is good enough,’ a liberating idea in a culture that demands perfection.
Committed to integration over balance, Ashley allows her roles to inform one another. Her children sit in on classes she teaches. Her students help her think through clinical dilemmas. Her clinical work informs her parenting. Each role strengthens the others, and when one becomes overwhelming, she offers herself grace, trusting that good enough truly is enough.
A Community-Centered Vision for the Future
Looking ahead, Ashley envisions mental health care that feels less like entering a system and more like entering a community. She hopes relationship-centered practice becomes the norm, and that children and families are met as whole people rather than cases to manage.
Her goals include developing trauma-informed frameworks that function in real-world settings, strengthening cross-sector collaboration, and expanding training models that prepare professionals to hold complexity without collapsing into rigid thinking. Whether training staff internationally, developing psychoeducational tools in the United States, or building digital communities of care, the aim remains constant: creating environments where young people can genuinely thrive.
Guidance for Emerging Leaders
For those seeking to create meaningful change through psychology and leadership, Ashley’s guidance is simple and grounded: “Stay human. Let yourself be moved. Let yourself be wrong. Let yourself keep learning.”
Lead with values, curiosity, and love, and use influence not to narrow access, but to widen circles, building communities of care capable of sustaining real change.
