About
Built from lineage.
The Jackie Project wasn't created from a curriculum. It was built from a decade of being in rooms with young people, learning what it actually takes to make a school feel like somewhere you belong.
The Jackie Project wasn't created from a curriculum. It was built from a decade of being in rooms with young people, learning what it actually takes to make a school feel like somewhere you belong.
Ashle Rodriguez-Perdomos is a community builder, youth advocate, healer, and educator with over a decade of experience in youth-centered systems change. She approaches every engagement the same way she approaches every young person — with full presence, zero assumptions, and a refusal to diagnose before she's listened.
She is the Founder & Executive Director of GOAT Camp Denver, a 501(c)3 youth mentorship nonprofit that has served hundreds of young people across the Denver metro area. That work — relational, culturally grounded, built around the whole person — is the foundation everything else is built on. Learn about GOAT Camp →
The Jackie Project grew directly out of that experience. After years of watching schools import frameworks that didn't fit, run trainings that didn't land, and implement programs that didn't last, Ashle built a practice centered on one simple premise: you have to earn your recommendations by being present first.
She brings that same standard to every engagement — showing up, sitting in, listening hard, and only then saying what she sees.
"Come empty if that's where you are. Come full if you've been carrying something. Both are welcome here. Show up however you actually show up — because that is the only version of you this work can be built around."
Ashle's work is lineage-based — meaning it takes seriously the truth that culture is passed down, not installed. What students inherit from their schools, their educators, and their environments shapes who they become. The Jackie Project exists to make sure what gets passed down is worth carrying.
Founder & Lead Consultant · Whole-school culture consulting · Denver, CO
Founder & Executive Director · 501(c)3 youth mentorship nonprofit · Denver Metro
Youth-centered systems change, community building, and educator development
Relational · Culturally grounded · Presence before prescription · Lineage-based
Ashle@becomingagoat.org
720-788-1348
We never recommend something we haven't earned through being present. Observation comes before advice, always. Every time.
What students carry out of a building matters more than any standard. Every school has the capacity to build a legacy worth leaving behind.
Real growth requires real conversation. We create spaces where educators and students can say what's actually true — without judgment and without consequence.
It can't belong to one person, one department, or one initiative. When everyone is in the room, something real can be built. Not before then.
When people think of their grandmother, they often think of fresh cookies, warm smiles, and someone who made the world feel a little softer.
That wasn't my grandmother.
Jackie was a pistol-toting, cursing, terrifying personality. She had a presence that made you question whether you were in the right room. She was unapologetically herself. Loud, fearless, and unwilling to shrink for anyone.
She was born in 1938 into a world that demanded survival from Black women. She lived in poverty. In fact, when I began creating this project, I struggled to find photographs of her. Poverty doesn't just limit opportunity. It often erases history.
Jackie carried a lengthy criminal record, but what she carried even more was an unbreakable will. The kind of will that isn't inherited through comfort. The kind that is forged through trauma, hardship, and impossible choices.
She survived because she had to.
As a child, I didn't always understand her. As an adult, I recognize that she was living with the tools her world had given her. She was evidence of what survival looks like when no one has the opportunity to heal.
But lineage is not destiny.
I often say that I am Jackie's wildest dream. Not because I escaped her story, but because I am the continuation of it.
I am the shape-shift.
I have the opportunity to transform survival into safety, fear into understanding, and inherited trauma into intentional care for the next generation.
That is why this project carries her name.
The Jackie Project is not about remembering my grandmother for who she was at her hardest. It is about honoring the strength that carried our family this far while refusing to believe that survival is the greatest inheritance we can leave our children.
Our children deserve more than survival. They deserve adults who are culturally prepared, emotionally equipped, and courageous enough to interrupt the patterns they inherited.
That is the legacy I want Jackie's name to represent.
Culture by design. Legacy on purpose.