Stephanie Carter has shaped her current professional pursuits around two things that feel most meaningful: honoring and extending the legacy of her late husband, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, and writing honestly about loss.
Previously, she spent 25 years in growth equity at ABS Capital Partners, where she raised over $1 billion for the firm’s funds and managed the investor relations, marketing and investment research functions. During Ash’s tenure as Secretary of Defense, she was actively engaged at the Pentagon, working to support service members, their families and veterans. For this work, she received the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Public Service Award.
When Ash died suddenly in 2022, she stepped away from The Verse Media, the platform she’d founded in 2020 to help people over 40 navigate their second half with more intention and less noise.
She writes about loss in all its forms — not just death, but the quieter losses that rarely get named or acknowledged: identities that shift, careers that end, nests that empty, futures that look different than planned. Her work is built on the idea that we can’t move through what we haven’t allowed ourselves to recognize. She has been featured in The New York Times and Katie Couric Media.
She is devoted to keeping Ash’s ideas alive and extending their reach. She recently led the effort to establish the Ashton B. Carter Visiting Professorship at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs—a position dedicated to exploring emerging technologies, scientific advancement, and global policy. She is the co-host of The Exchange, an annual conference on the intersection of technology and national security inspired by Ash’s work. She also serves on the advisory board of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
She is a proud grandmother to Ash’s namesakes, an avid birder, a passionate sports fan and the owner of a poorly behaved dog named Rex.