Acerca de
Low Risk, High Uncertainty
Ashley is a problem-focused and moat-based businesswoman who believes in companies that aim to solve problems from a low risk, yet highly uncertain position. High uncertainty invites highly competitive opportunities to emerge without high risk.
Ashley is allocating a portion of her funds to invest in low risk research and/or development that has potential to solve important problems. These projects, if successful, are designed to produce results that can be translated into commercial products and/or services.
Below is list of projects that will be pursued in 2024; the list is updated as new projects are added. If you have a project that you believe fits this portfolio of projects, please contact Ashley.
I. Using Machine Learning to Detect Blood Composition and Quantification
Not a single individual goes through life without receiving blood-work. The current state-of-the-art for processing blood samples are labor-intensive, costly and time consuming. This project aims to use a combination of technology and data science techniques to reduce the amount of labor needed to process samples, cut the costs of sample processing, and to reduce sample processing time to 5-30 minutes. The high uncertainty factor in this project is evident; identifying and quantifying molecular composition of blood requires expensive machinery and reagents. Eliminating the need for reagents is no small task for any target molecule, let alone an entire panel or portfolio of them. The opportunity in this project is also evident; if a proof-of-concept is achieved, processing of biological samples would become less labor-intensive, more economically accessible, and less time consuming, which are all desired societal outcomes.
II. A Self-Therapy Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder Using Reality-Integration Therapy
Integrate BPD uses Reality Integration Therapy™ (RIT), a new therapeutic technique developed by Ashley Zahabian for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). As someone who formerly suffered from BPD, Zahabian felt strongly about creating a therapeutic technique based on her own personal experiences and how she was able to work through the disorder. Viewing BPD as a “personal-reality disorder,” Zahabian realised how the split between her personal reality and actual reality was causing her symptoms and perpetuating the disorder. With constant reality-testing, she was able to integrate into actual reality and overcome the illness. Thus, Reality Integration Therapy™ was born.
​
Zahabian spent five years delving into psychoanalytic literature to find answers. Through inspiration by the works of Klein and Kernberg, Zahabian began to understand BPD differently. Reality Integration Therapy™ (RIT) is founded on the idea that BPD is a result of prolonged, narcissistic abuse in childhood, which creates disruption and dysfunction in one’s ability to develop whole object relations – the capacity to see oneself and other people in a realistic, stable, and integrated way – for the good and bad segments (Klein, 1921). As a defense mechanism against the prolonged narcissistic abuse, the child generates their own fantasy world, preventing them from interacting with their painful reality. Zahabian agrees with Kernberg’s (1985) suggestion that those presenting with narcissistic personality structures have an underlying borderline personality organisation, and she also suggests the opposite holds true – those with borderline personality structures have an underlying narcissistic personality organization. Internalizing the abuser’s behaviors, the person with BPD unknowingly becomes their own abuser.
Copyright by Ashley Zahabian © 2025. All rights reserved.