Horizons Promotes Academic Director to Executive Role

Ashley Nechaev becomes head of HSHU; carries over many responsibilities from prior role

Sacred Heart University has promoted Ashley Nechaev to executive director for Horizons at SHU (HSHU). Previously, she was HSHU’s academic director and curriculum coordinator.

In Nechaev’s new role, she will manage all aspects of the Horizons at Sacred Heart program, including academic and social emotional programming, staff oversight, fundraising and donor stewardship and budget development and management. She will work closely with HSHU’s board of directors.

Responsibilities in her former position included training and coaching staff, planning and providing all professional development, writing curriculum, establishing the HSHU’s philosophy of education and planning and organizing enrichment. Nechaev will carry over a majority of these to her new position.

“I am honored to accept this new role as executive director of HSHU. Over the past three years, I have had the opportunity to work with an amazing group of educators, committed board members and a wonderful group of Bridgeport families and their children,” Nechaev said. “The Horizons at SHU community is restorative, powerful and dedicated to showing children that learning is joyful, mysterious, collaborative and fun.

“Together, this community celebrates diversity, explores equity and inclusion, and recognizes, supports and empowers the unique beauty of each individual in the HSHU community,” Nechaev said. “I am looking forward to contributing to the growth and success of HSHU and to the future leaders who attend this program.”

Prior to Nechaev’s time at SHU, she was the assistant middle school academic director for Horizons at Greens Farms Academy, where she also worked as a literacy specialist, a teacher at Horizons and a first- and second-grade teaching assistant. Additionally, she taught sixth grade in Bridgeport’s Six-to-Six Interdistrict Magnet School.