Sen. Ashlei Spivey: Championing Leadership, Justice, and Community Power
Ashlei Spivey
Legacy Maker | Champion for Black Women and Girls
Story by Aniya Porter
Sen. Ashlei Spivey is an Omaha-born, North Omaha-raised leader whose work spans community organizing, nonprofit leadership, and public policy. Spivey has called Legislative District 13 her home her entire life, growing up in the very community she now represents in the Nebraska Legislature.
A graduate of Omaha North High Magnet School, she went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in communications and marketing from Jackson State University and a graduate degree in urban social planning from the University of Texas at Arlington. Her academic background reflects the throughline of her career: building systems that expand opportunity and improve quality of life in historically underserved communities.
Spivey is the founder and executive director of I Be Black Girl (IBBG), a Nebraska-based organization rooted in reproductive justice and Black maternal health. Founded in 2017, IBBG has grown into a collective and power-building hub for Black women, femmes, and girls, growing to more than 500 members and investing millions back into community through advocacy, grants, and programming. The organization’s work includes birth justice programming and a doula training initiative aimed to improve outcomes for Black birthing people across Nebraska.
In addition to IBBG, Spivey founded Ay Spivey, LLC, a consulting firm that works with organizations to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into leadership structures and institutional systems.
Her civic leadership extends beyond her own organizations. She has served on the board of the Women’s Funding Network and the Nebraska Perinatal Quality Improvement Collaborative and is immediate past board former president of the ACLU of Nebraska. She was also a 2022 participant in MIT’s REAP program and member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.
Spivey has also helped reshape local philanthropy. Through I Be Black Girl Gives, she co-launched Omaha’s first Black Women Giving Circle in more than 20 years, a funding vehicle to invest directly in programs benefiting Black women and girls.
Spivey is married and a mother of two children. Her leadership philosophy often centers family, generational equity, and the long-term sustainability of community institutions.
Her recognitions include USA Today’s 2024 Nebraska Woman of the Year, the 2023 J.M. Kaplan Innovation Prize, Midlands Business Journal 40 Under 40, Ten Outstanding Young Omahans, Urban League and NAACP honors, and multiple public health and civic leadership awards.
Today, as the elected State Senator for District 13, Spivey’s legislative priorities include expanding access to quality education, ensuring affordable healthcare, property tax relief while maintaining infrastructure and school funding, affordable housing, childcare access, job creation, and environmental health protections.
Ashlei Spivey’s legacy is still being written. But her impact is already measurable: she has built institutions, shifted policy conversations, and expanded leadership pipelines for Black women in Nebraska.
Know a Black community leader whose story should be told? Nominate them by emailing office@lozafina.com.
