Ashlee Williams serves as Assistant Vice President for Orientation to Career and Chief Belonging and Title IX Officer at Roanoke College. She also serves as the College’s Athletics Diversity and Inclusion Designee (ADID), connecting Roanoke Athletics with NCAA resources, initiatives, and information related to inclusion and belonging. In her role as Assistant Vice President, Williams provides leadership for a comprehensive portfolio focused on supporting students from their transition to college through their preparation for life and career after graduation. Her work brings together orientation, student success and retention, academic support and advising, career development, experiential learning, student employment, and initiatives designed to foster connection and belonging.
As Chief Belonging and Title IX Officer, Williams helps advance the College’s commitment to a campus environment in which students can participate fully in the academic and co-curricular life of the institution. Her responsibilities include providing leadership for belonging initiatives and overseeing the College’s Title IX responsibilities, including education, prevention, and the institutional response to reports of sex discrimination and sexual misconduct.
Her appointment as Roanoke College’s Athletics Diversity and Inclusion Designee extends this work into the student-athlete experience. The NCAA identifies the ADID as a primary institutional contact for diversity - and inclusion-related information and a bridge for sharing resources and initiatives among the NCAA, campuses, and athletics departments. In this role, Williams works alongside Athletics leadership, coaches, staff, and campus partners to support an environment where student-athletes experience connection, opportunity, belonging, and support throughout their Roanoke experience.
Prior to joining Roanoke College, Williams spent three years at Eastern University, where her work included athletic academic advising and leadership for diversity and sexual violence prevention programming within the athletic department. She is also a trained facilitator for the NCAA Division III Inclusive Leaders Program and previously served on the NCAA association-wide Minorities Opportunities and Interests Committee (MOIC). Williams is particularly passionate about helping students discover their strengths, develop meaningful relationships, access transformative experiences, and connect their education to a greater sense of purpose. Her work emphasizes creating integrated systems of support that help students navigate challenges, build social and professional capital, and prepare confidently for their lives and careers after college.
Williams earned three bachelor’s degrees from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a master’s degree in Transformational Leadership from Seattle University. She is pursuing a doctorate in organizational leadership at Eastern University, where her research focuses on the experiences of Black student-athletes at predominantly White Division III institutions and how they navigate career-related support systems.
