Ashe McGovern is Associate Director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at Columbia Law School, a think tank focused on developing legal and policy solutions to tensions that arise when religious liberty guarantees conflict with other fundamental rights to equality and justice under the Constitution. Before joining Columbia Law, Ashe was a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington, DC, where they engaged in state and federal public policy research, analysis, and advocacy, with a particular focus on LGBTQ poverty and the criminalization of LGBTQ communities. Prior to CAP, Ashe worked as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at New York Legal Assistance Group, where they launched the LGBTQ Health and Economic Justice Initiative to provide direct legal services and advocacy to low-income LGBTQ communities across New York. Ashe earned their J.D. from Cornell Law School, where they served as an Editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, and received the Freeman Award for Civil and Human Rights. Ashe’s writing has been featured in The Nation, NPR, Huffington Post, The Advocate, and ThinkProgress, among other sites, and prior to law school, Ashe worked as an adult education teacher and tutor in Brooklyn.