Building Community Through Kindness & Poetry

A lifelong reader and writer, Ashley Laubinger was born and raised in Massachusetts. As an award-winning poet and published author, she often finds herself snuggled in a blanket, reading Shakespeare and filling notebooks with her thoughts and observations.  

Ashley enjoys teaching others and works as a summer counselor, showing campers how fun learning can be. She also serves as a peer leader, tutoring students at her high school, and volunteers with an international English learner in Ukraine. Offering conversation, friendship, and emotional support to a peer impacted by the war through weekly video sessions, Ashley graciously builds an authentic connection across borders.  

Ashley is especially proud of the weekly poetry column she curates in her local newspaper, and the new international poetry society, www.acrosstheverse.com, that she is building. She believes both initiatives provide others a space for discovery and the opportunity to connect.  

With her service already exceeding several hundred hours, Ashley Laubinger has volunteered at her local newspaper, food pantry, and library, while also helping children living in homeless shelters and foster homes. She provides both prevention programming and peer-to-peer crisis support for teens at risk of suicide.  

In her free time, Ashley enjoys taking courses at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, playing the piano, and has studied perfume in Los Angeles and New York City. Inspired to marry her sense of smell and way with words, she built a small online business to share bespoke perfumes and poetry with others, including her self-published book of poetry, "From the Swing."