Ashley Thalken

Ashley Thalken has taught in the Tulsa area for nearly 8 years after moving to Oklahoma from her home state of Texas. Though she started her career in the corporate world, teaching quickly drew her in. She is passionate about making the classroom experience engaging, relevant, and empathetic. After several years of teaching both United States History and Modern World History, she noticed a gap in knowledge and the availability of resources over the African continent. Such ignorance has both implicitly and explicitly perpetrated false information, one-sided narratives, and stereotypes about Africa’s role in historical and global developments. Personally and professionally, Ashley seeks to better understand Africa for the richness that it has to offer the world so much so that she proposed to co-teach a new class called African Experience to her school’s curriculum. While seeking out resources for planning the class, the TAT program proved the perfect fit for this endeavor.  She is thrilled to be a part of the TAT community that Boston University is graciously supporting and is particularly excited to learn about African climate and geography in addition to written documentation and mapping from pre-colonial Africa. 

Ashley received a B.S. in Business from Trinity University in San Antonio and an M.B.A. from the University of Denver. When she’s not teaching, Ashley enjoys spending time with her husband and two young daughters, reading the New York Times, watching cooking shows, attempting to garden, and playing piano for her church.