Ashani is also a nationally recognized leader in health communication science and is a leader in NORC’s Center for Health Communication Science.

Ashani is an experienced and award-winning social scientist with over 20 years’ experience conducting social science research, including rigorous evaluation of communication messages, campaigns, and initiatives to promote health and well-being. She blends her academic background in political science, political behavior, and public policy with years of work in health policy, public health, health marketing, communication, and mixed-method evaluation. Ashani has expertise in participatory and deliberative models for community and partner engagement, engaging and recruiting people to research, including recruiting different groups of people to clinical research trials. She specializes in designing quasi-experimental research studies, mixed method research, and qualitative data collection and analysis. Ashani presents at national and international meetings and conferences and is published in peer reviewed journals. She is a sought after thought leader and public speaker.

Ashani returned to NORC after serving as the Global Impact Team, Director of Public Policy Research and Monitoring, in McDonald’s Global Public Policy and Government Relations Center of Excellence. At McDonald’s, she led strategic planning to build McDonald’s public policy research function and was advisor to cross-functional, company teams leading Environmental Sustainability, Community Connection and Brand Risk and Promotion activities. While at McDonald’s, she also directed social and traditional media monitoring and analysis, data science, reputational risk and brand promotion research, and campaign monitoring and measurement.

Ashani holds degrees from Hampton and Purdue University with continued studies on quantitative methods at the University of Michigan and political science at Leiden University and the University of Chicago. She is adjunct faculty at Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health and the president of the Society for Health Communication. She serves on the CDC’s Communications and Public Engagement Workgroup (CPEW), advising the Federal Advisory Committee to the Director, CDC, on communication with the public, on the Ad Council Research Committee, and is a former board member for the YWCA of Greater Atlanta.