PITTSBURGH — Running one nonprofit is a big ask for any college student. But three? You might have to miss a few parties to balance those responsibilities with your school work.
Only someone as driven as Ashley Lynn Priore, a 21-year-old Shadyside resident and University of Pittsburgh senior, could juggle the operations of three nonprofits with wildly different goals while still completing the requirements of her English and politics majors. Add the stresses of a global pandemic on top of that, and it’s amazing Priore is functioning at anything resembling full capacity.
The three nonprofits in question are The Queens Gambit Chess Institute Pittsburgh, which offers lessons in chess and the real-world skills it fosters; Y22, which promotes age diversity on the boards of nonprofit organizations; and Youth Political Strategies, Priore’s most recent endeavor that specializes in supporting political campaigns in their efforts to reach young voters.
“I’m just so passionate about these things, whether it be chess or youth rights or making sure there’s solid representation in government,” Priore told the Post-Gazette. “I make time for them.”
Chess has been a fixture in her life and those of her three siblings since they were kids. All of them were home-schooled, and her dad first introduced her to the sport — yes, chess is a sport — when she was 4. The family became ubiquitous at local chess tournaments, and she always would wear her lucky Supergirl T-shirt as she faced her competition in this “super male-dominated sport.”
“I think I learned at an early age that there needed to be some sort of representation in the game,” she said. “There needed to be more female teachers and an environment where young women didn’t feel like they had to represent every woman in the world, which is what I felt like.”
She founded Queens Gambit in 2014 as a freshman in high school. The nonprofit, which she described as “more than an ordinary chess club,” has been able to reach about 3,000 students worldwide, according to its website. The onset of COVID-19 forced lessons to be conducted virtually, and she said that made it easier to find new students from around the globe but tougher to connect to ones locally due to factors such as some having unreliable access to Wi-Fi.
As you may expect, Priore has thoughts on “The Queen’s Gambit,” the critically acclaimed Netflix miniseries starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a chess prodigy trying to make a name for herself in the 1950s and ’60s. She thinks the show got the actual chess mostly correct, but it downplayed the commonplace sexism in that world. Men have called Priore a “b****” after losing to her, and some of her mentors have been sexually harassed at tournaments.
“[T]here’s no way you’re going to a tournament and dudes are going to kiss your hand after you beat them …,” she said. “I wish the show would’ve emphasized that more because they had the platform to do it.”
In 2019, Priore founded Y22 after years of being told she wasn’t old enough to do things such as running for a district 4 school board seat. Its goal is to help create more “intergenerational diversity” on nonprofit boards by both training those 25 and under to serve in those positions and the nonprofits themselves to be more accepting of young people’s leadership potential. She said that Queens Gambit has helped connect her with some of the folks she also works with through Y22.
Then came the 2020 presidential election that pitted Democrat Joe Biden against incumbent Republican President Donald Trump. Priore was a Biden supporter from the beginning but was disappointed that his team never seemed to make reaching younger voters a priority.
“The campaign just didn’t have effective engagement techniques,” she said. “Young people just weren’t excited. They were like, ‘Here we go again.’”
So in September 2020, she founded Youth Political Strategies to aid political candidates she believes in on both a local and national level connect with their youth constituents. Since then, Priore has advised the likes of state Rep. Ed Gainey’s successful Democratic mayoral primary campaign in Pittsburgh and Karen Carter Peterson’s failed effort to win a Louisiana congressional district, among others.
Priore is currently acting as a consultant on the campaign of Jerry Dickinson, a 34-year-old Regent Square resident and Pitt law professor trying to unseat Rep. Mike Doyle in Pennsylvania’s 18th district. The Trump era “ignited the youth energy into politics” and made under-25s such as Priore want to jump head first into this space, Dickinson said. As an educator and mentor to many young adults, he understands the value of their voices — and their votes.
“You look at the makeup of Democratic party politics: It’s an old boys’ club,” he said. “It’s breaking down … but you also have to realize and make room for the youth to play a role in the reconstruction of American politics. I think Pittsburgh could do a lot more to help that.”
Dickinson said that Priore has been helping his campaign create communication strategies that employ everything from social media to town halls specifically for younger voters to directly address him. He hopes this experience is benefiting her and her future ambitions as well. At this point, he’s a big believer in the value Priore provides and expects “more Ashleys coming down the pike” once they realize how much they have to contribute.
“It is an absolute privilege for a campaign to have someone with the energy and wisdom and the foresight of Ashley on the team,” he said. “We are very much looking forward to what is to come down the line for her as well.”
He believes that Pittsburgh has “the talent, knowledge and leadership skills among our youth to tackle” pressing issues such as racial injustice, poverty and climate change. That includes Priore, who among all her other work is trying to convince the Biden administration to establish a White House Youth Policy Council that would assist the executive branch in making sure the president’s “policies are reflective of young people.”
She genuinely thinks it will be hard for Biden to win another election “because young people are really, really upset at not being viewed as an equal in the fight.” She wants Biden and anyone out there who underestimates people her age to always remember how capable and politically potent she and her peers are and will continue to be.
“Young people are voters, and I think sometimes people forget that,” she said. “They remember things. It’s important to have strong engagement. … We’re here to be supportive and to help you, but we also want dialogue and a conversation.”
