Ashland is the Founder of Creatives Meet Business (CMB), an event and podcast series in Austin for creatives of all disciplines to define themselves as “artists” and “creatives” AND “small business owners.” She also hosts, produces, and edits the Creatives Meet Business podcast and helps folks one-on-one with goal planning and various endeavors.
Ashland values collaboration and accessibility of knowledge and information and wanted to create something unique for the community. The result was CMBXP, a three-day conference featuring 50+ workshops that help artists, creatives, and small business owners in real-time with Business, Marketing, Skills Development and Storytelling.
Before founding both CMB and CMBXP and dedicating her time to community building and transformative educational events, Ashland worked in film and production. She has produced several short films including the festival hit “Rat Pack Rat” (Sundance 2014 – Special Jury Prize for Unique Vision, SXSW 2014), and she was a Production Consultant for “TOWER” (SXSW 2016 – Documentary Grand Jury Winner & Documentary Feature Audience Award Winner).
Concurrent with her work in film, Ashland honed her fundraising, marketing, and event production skills during her years at an arts-based non-profit. Ashland is also the Sponsor Relations Coordinator with the ATX Television Festival and previously served as the Director of Programming for Social Media Week Austin.
She LOVES connecting people (and actually teaches about it) brunch, cheese plates, and conversations. Invite her to brunch or happy hour if you want to chat!