With decades of experience as an educator and school leader, Ashley Sarver is the founder and Head of School at Eclipse Academy. Ashley works closely with each family to understand their values, needs, and academic goals, in order to design customized full-time and -part-time school programs that center the learner’s experience.

Ashley was born and raised in the Appalachian foothills of Athens, Ohio, where she attended Ohio University concurrent with high school. She graduated early at age 20 from Boston University with a B.S. in Journalism and Political Science. Soon after, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to teach elite test-prep courses, and soon after landed her dream role as a teacher of English, social studies and the arts at a pioneering Los Altos, CA middle-and-high school, specializing in 1-to-1 and small-group learning.

There Ashley served for six years in diverse roles: Teacher, Department Chair, Course Designer, Guidance Counselor, Accreditation Coordinator, Assistant Director, and Director. After helping to double that school’s enrollment, Ashley was recruited by Fusion Academy in 2013 to launch a new Bay Area campus in Marin, CA. As the founding Head of School, Ashley launched the Fusion Marin campus in the fall of 2014 with five teachers and eight students, and doubled or tripled enrollment annually. By 2018, Fusion Marin had grown to 35+ staff and 250+ students. Within just a few years, her campus had become one of the top three performing campuses among 50+ campuses nationally, winning awards for exceeding growth targets and for parent and staff loyalty (NPS). Passionate about coaching herself and others, Ashley became a Certified High Performance Coach in February of 2018. In her five rewarding years at Fusion Academy, Ashley learned how to launch, accredit, and grow a successful private school.

For Ashley, nothing is more rewarding than helping families design solutions to challenging academic problems, informed by her experience as a course designer, with a Master’s degree in social science education. For 15+ years she partnered with non-profits and venture capital to create dynamic online coursework in the humanities and arts. Ashley was recruited by Bill Gates’ think tank bgC3 to help design, accredit, and pilot-teach The Big History Project, an open-source, award-winning online course integrating history and science, with an inquiry-learning approach. Ashley was also recruited by UC Doorways (University of California, Office of the President) to teach educators throughout California how to write course applications for a-to-g approval, with an emphasis on integrating academic and career-technical coursework.

In June of 2018, Ashley moved on to found a new school, Eclipse Academy, an online school made specifically for gifted, profoundly gifted, and 2e learners. Ashley is delighted for Eclipse to serve students everywhere, from California to Singapore and Costa Rica, with a pay-as-you-go tuition model and experienced teachers across time zones. Her mission is to make an elite 1-to-1 and small-group education accessible to as many learners as possible — at home, around the world.

Eclipse Academy is co-headquartered in San Francisco, California, and in Ashley’s hometown of Athens, Ohio.

Learn more and connect with Ashley on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ashleysarver