Impact Interview: Ashley Davis
Name: Ashley Davis
Role/Function: Courageous Leadership Coach, Ashley Davis Collective
1. What are you working on these days?
What really lights me up is the courageous leadership coaching I’ve been doing, which has been a pivot from nearly 14 years of leading corporate responsibility at Cole Haan.
As companies, we have so much power to do better and to build healthier societies that can help heal the planet. But as leaders within those companies, it's not just about “saving the world”. It's actually asking ourselves, how can I change? I love that Rumi quote, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
When I first heard it, it struck me. Like yeah, I deserve to be joyful. I deserve to be peaceful. I deserve to not go to work exhausted, angry and frustrated, because a company isn't doing what I feel is right by the world and its stakeholders. I started thinking, what if there are other leaders like me inside of corporate responsibility, outside of corporate responsibility, who are feeling similarly? Leaders who may feel afraid to stand for their values or to lead in a different way than modeled or too afraid to take time off and care for themselves? Wouldn't it be real change if we as a collective of leaders bring our human values to the decisions that we're making? I know through my leadership development fellowship for corporate social intrapreneurs with The Aspen Institute First Movers Fellowship that we exist, and we are the change agents in business, willing to stand for something more.
So that led me to leadership coaching and specifically I coach around connecting with our values and personal purpose. I support what I call the “big hearted rebels” in business and I call my leadership style “courageous leadership” — it’s a spin-off of the Conscious Leadership Movement in conscious capitalism, combined with self-awareness and inner work. I think from that place of clear purpose and values comes so much courage to really disrupt the status quo, for the betterment of the world through business.
Right now I’m planning UNCHARTED, a month-long retreat from May 16-June 10 in Sri Lanka. It’s for these big hearted rebels who are ready to be courageous enough and ready to risk no longer fitting into the status quo of leadership to connect more deeply with their real and authentic purpose. And from that place, be able to amplify their impact and go back to their work really amped up.
This isn't about taking a vacation — it's about creating these intentional periods of stillness so that we can go back and do the work from a different place. That’s why it's intentionally long, 25 days, to disrupt habits and create new patterns, and be in community with others who care deeply about changing the world for the better, but also about living alive and free and joyfully and leading authentically from that place. I've been saying it's like leadership development, meets personal liberation, meets a yoga retreat, at a five-star luxury villa with an Ayurvedic chef — all the good food, all the nature, all the warmth, and a place to cultivate that new kind of leadership and new way of human being. Or actually, very old way.
2. What was the “aha” moment that sparked your interest in social impact?
When I was in college I read Yvon Chouinard’s book, Let My People Go Surfing. It just cracked me open. Like, what if all companies started to take even just a little bit more care about the people who work for them, the people who make their products, their impact on the environment? What if we treated people, ourselves and the planet with that type of respect? What would be possible if we took some of this thinking, some of these mindsets, some of these practices into businesses that are not thinking that way?
Little did I know how freaking hard that was going to be. But it was that first “aha” moment of seeing this company (Patagonia) that my friends really respect, that’s super expensive… and they're doing amazing things. I want my dollars and my time to be spent enabling that.
My second “aha” moment came more recently. At Cole Haan, I’d frequently go on supply chain trips to India, Vietnam and China, and they were always whirlwind trips that felt nauseating. So I started building in more time for myself and created a two-week trip to Sri Lanka in the middle of a two-month trip.
And what happened there was this “aha” moment of, “Whoa, this is what it feels like to slow down. This is what it feels like to not put pressure on myself. This is what it feels like to not have to try to fit into this corporate culture or say the right thing to influence the right leader. This is what it feels like to just be me.” For the first time, I felt like I met myself, or remembered who I was. And I was the happiest, healthiest, most confident version of me that I had ever been.
So I started designing all of my supply chain trips around getting to Sri Lanka to continue this conversation, this love story. And that’s why I’m hosting UNCHARTED there. I want to invite leaders specifically into that space of calm and peacefulness, of being, of joy and wonder, of deep listening to ourselves, to each other and to nature.
3. How did you break into the social impact space?
In college, there wasn’t a major for corporate responsibility so I created my own concentration in environmental studies, with a little bit of sociology, biology, chemistry and environmental chemistry. I decided I wanted to expressly try to change companies from the inside, to help them become more “Patagonia” in their own way.
While I was applying for jobs toward the end of college, I was approached by Phillip Morris. Working for the tobacco industry didn’t feel right at first — but after reading Let My People Go Surfing and Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, I realized, “Wait a minute, I want to work for tobacco. And I want to learn all their dirty secrets and bring them down from the inside.” So I went back to Phillip Morris and asked them to consider me again, and they said yes.
With my next career move, to Cole Haan, I intentionally chose fashion as an industry with a lot of influence, thinking that we wear our values on our clothes and how we present ourselves to the world means something. And I’ve been there for nearly 14 years.
4. Working in social impact is often about driving change. What is the skill or trait that has been most important for your work as a change agent? How did you learn or hone it?
The first is curiosity. Not just, how can we create this product in a different way to be better for the planet? But — how can I deeply listen, by being curious about the world and about other people and about the planet? And not just assume that I have all the answers or the right way of doing it?
And then I’d say, the courage to embrace being that rebel, being the one who's different in business. I'm always the edge-walker, the black sheep. At some point, it was just like, well, yep, that's gonna be me. And that’s okay.
As for resources, there isn’t just one book you can read to become a more curious and courageous leader. These are mindsets that need to be shifted. I went through the Aspen Institute’s First Movers Fellowship and continue to work with the program as a leadership coach. There, I learned about so many of the inner skills and mindsets that we can access.
Being coached has also helped a lot. There's hardly a week over the past three years that I haven't had some kind of coach, depending on my needs. It was by feeling heard and seen really deeply by someone else that I was able to begin to see that I even had these skills and that they were essential to this change work.
In terms of practices, I’d say meditation and journaling. One of the most important practices for leaders is having a reflection practice — that can be meditation, that can be walking in nature, that can be journaling, that can be dance and movement, but having some sort of practice for stillness and reflection is important.
And to become more courageous, I think that really comes from having clarity of purpose. It’s understanding, what does it feel like when I'm really fired up and really excited about something? There's one one really amazing book, Giving Voice to Values, How To Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right by Mary Gentile. She's one of the mentors in the First Movers program and talks about the importance of purpose in having that courage to speak our values in the workplace when it's likely going to be the unpopular position.
Other resources include:
The work of Otto Scharmer and The Presencing Institute through Theory U
Anything by David Whyte of Invitas, most especially The Heart Aroused, Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America
Acumen's Jaqueline Novogratz and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, Practices to Build a Better World
My dear friend and fellow First Mover (Go Class X!), Deepa Purushothaman's The First, The Few, The Only, How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America (I was lucky enough to read an early draft manuscript a couple years ago when Deepa was first drafting her book and in the midst of making the decision to stay or go form corporate America and which option was best for her health and her impact on the world, a move we were both contemplating for similar reasons. Her story, deep wisdom, and friendship continues to inspire me)
Frederic Laloux's Reinventing Organizations
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard...my first initiation (:
The work of Dr. Robert Kegan has also been influential more recently with my coaching and my own personal development
5. What most excites you about the social impact space right now?
I'm starting to see an intersection between the desire for meaning in life and work and the recognition of wellbeing and mindfulness, and this is bringing me hope. Because I believe that when we're working from that spirit, when we’re well-rested, when we’re taking good care of ourselves, when we’re fueling up on time in nature and appreciating and connecting with ourselves, with others and with the planet, we're working at our highest performance and ability. I'm seeing this permission to step off the hamster wheel every now and then and really repair and renew ourselves, and it brings me hope — because the leaders who are willing to do that and courageous enough to do that are the ones who will change the world. They know that if they're burning out, they're screwed.
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