Dr. Ashley Gripper is the daughter of the late Dawn Kipkin and Paul Gripper III. She is a grower, healer, nurturer, teacher, and community-rooted scholar. Ashley began her formal agricultural training at Sankofa Community Farm in Southwest Philadelphia. She is a member of Soil Generation and a graduate of Sacred Vibes Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship Program.

Ashley is also the Creator of Land Based Jawns,  a care-based initiative cultivating spaces for safety, softness, and connection through herbal medicine, workshops, and skillshares. Rooted in ancestral wisdom and inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parables, her work reframes preparedness and community safety as practices of healing and collective power.

She carries this same commitment into her role as an Assistant Professor in Drexel University’s Department of Environmental Health and Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements, and Population Health Equity. There, she supports students and researches the ways we remember, return to, and practice land-based ancestral wisdom.

Ashley holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Arcadia University, an MPH in Epidemiology from Columbia University, and a PhD in Population Health Sciences and Environmental Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.