Role
A seasoned corporate leader and successful management consultant, Ashley Allen approaches coaching and facilitation with the mind of a strategist. She has more than 20 years’ experience as an executive in strategic planning, corporate communications, project management and marketing. Add to that proven expertise and a true passion for developing strong, resilient leaders, and wide-ranging coaching and mentoring experience. Equally at ease with high-achieving entrepreneurs, corporate executives and high-potential managers, her energetic, engaging style makes goal clarification, development planning and meaningful personal enhancement both an enjoyable and successful process.
Experience and Expertise
Prior to joining The Executive Edge®, Inc., Ashley held business-unit executive positions within Tribune Company focusing on such diverse functions as new business development, corporate communications, and strategic and scenario planning. She served as a spokesperson for several years, honing her skills in communication, issues management, media relations and messaging. She has a rich background in complex, results-focused project management and product development. A proponent of community building as a leadership-development tool, she has helped numerous executives advance their leadership presence – and build important networks – through strategic community involvement and nonprofit-board participation. Her passion for creating high-performing teams and helping people discover, develop and leverage their core strengths led her to pursue leadership and executive coaching, consulting, training and facilitation. She inspires both clarity and confidence in her clients, helping them achieve at their very highest levels.
Ashley’s key areas of expertise include:
- Executive leadership coaching (typically C-Suite, Executive/Group Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors)
- Personal and team transformation
- Strategic thinking, goal clarification, planning and project management
- Executive presence, personal branding and effective communication
- Workshop development and facilitation designed to build resilient, high-performing teams
- Facilitation of strategic and operational planning processes
Ashley helps her clients focus clearly on issues and opportunities – and act on them effectively. Whether coaching, consulting or facilitating, Ashley asks the right questions, and engages her clients in far-ranging conversations that lead to creative, actionable, on-target solutions.
Clients
Ashley’s client list ranges from successful small-business owners and entrepreneurs to large multi-national organizations. In the past three years she has facilitated workshops in 12 countries. Her clients relish her results orientation, ingenuity, inclusiveness and the health injection of humor she employs.
Professional Certifications
- Certified in The Executive Edge®: The Coaching AdvantEdge™
- Kolbe Certified™ Consultant (certified in Kolbe Wisdom™ portfolio, including Kolbe RightFit™ and Kolbe Leadership Analytics™)
- Certified in Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator® (CPP Certified)
- Certified in DiSC®
- Center for Creative Leadership’s Benchmarks 360 portfolio
- Certified in The Leadership Challenge/Leadership Practices Inventory® 360
- Extensive use of Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Strengths Based Leadership instruments in personal and team development
Education, Professional Associations and Community Involvement
Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Ashley both advocates and exemplifies lifelong learning. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and attended the University of Nairobi, Kenya, Amherst College, the University of Tulsa and the Advanced Executive Program at Northwestern University. She has been a participant in the international Strategic Coach® program for entrepreneurs since 1998.
She has been actively engaged in the community through Junior Achievement, a past chairman of the board. Ashley was involved with the committee that conceived, and ultimately launched, a magnet high school: The Junior Achievement Academy for Leadership & Entrepreneurship. She also has served on the board of directors of United Arts of Central Florida, the Hispanic Business Initiative Fund, and committees for the Heart of Florida United Way. Ashley is a long-time mentor for WOMEN Unlimited.
Honors And Awards
Ashley’s work to further both reading skills/literacy and financial literacy have been recognized on a national level. She received both the Junior Achievement USA Silver Leadership Award and Bronze Leadership Award for her efforts in fostering financial literacy and work-readiness in youth. While with Tribune, Ashley and the team she led received the national Scripps Howard Foundation Public Service Award for a creative, community-wide reading program aimed at increasing childhood literacy rates. And Ashley was presented with the American Advertising Federation-Orlando Silver Medal Award, its highest accolade, given to individuals for their outstanding contributions to advertising and who have been active in furthering the industry’s standards, creative excellence and responsibility in areas of social concern.
More About Ashley
Ashley and her husband, artist Bradley Wegner, live and work in Winter Park, Florida. Avocations include extensive domestic and world travel, photography, reading, and strategies for abundant health, wellness and energy. She has aspirations one day to become a Master Gardener. Until then, her focus is tending a backyard filled with dozens of plants indigenous to Africa that flourish in Florida. The idea of helping both people and plants thrive in adverse conditions – and in healthy climes – is a common theme in Ashley’s professional and personal life.
Learn More
For additional information about The Executive Edge®, please contact us at:
Phone: 1.630.404.2256
Email: info@theexecutiveedge.net
Web: http://www.theexecutiveedge.net/
