By Erin Wooddell

When you visit CWLI’s offices on South Broad Street, you’ll be greeted by a new face. Holly D. Ashley, the new executive director for CWLI, can be found at the top of the steps, busily spending her first couple of weeks meeting all board members and acclimating herself with each of CWLI’s committees and their offerings.

And we CWLI members know that’s no small feat. From Women Mentoring Women to Networking and IMPACT, our organization is filled to the brim with committees and opportunities for involvement. Holly can’t wait to get involved. For her, this position is a self-described dream job, fulfilling her desire to help empower other women in their lives and careers.

Having spent her career in social service and nonprofit opportunities, Holly is no stranger to honing an organization’s mission and developing strategic plans to improve value and advance outcomes.

Path to Service

After receiving her undergraduate degree in human services management from UTC, Holly began her career at United Way of Chattanooga, an organization she believes provides the best introduction to the nonprofit world. Though she’s a native Chattanoogan, she was able to learn more about her community through this position. Feeling called to help other people, she spent the next 10 years fundraising and working in program management and communications at United Way, Partnership for Families, Children and Adults, and the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.

Realizing that her role was morphing to a focus on outcomes and community impact, while dealing with boards and finances, Holly returned to school to obtain her MBA.

“Working in nonprofits consumed me,” she explains. “It was my entire life, and there’s a personal reason behind that calling.”

The desire to help people stems from her formative years. As a child, Holly was exposed to domestic violence as a survivor of sexual assault. In overcoming her past and the hurt associated with her experiences, Holly discovered a passion to help others and give back to the community in which she lived. Putting everything into her work, however, didn’t leave much room for coping and dealing with her past.

While working at the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, Holly reached a point where she recognized she needed to step back and focus on herself. Taking a break was hard for her, but with a supportive CEO who practiced the idea of self-care, rest, and a work/life balance, Holly began to focus on herself and on healing.

At this point, a huge shift occurred in Holly’s life. Before, she had placed so much value on her career. Now, as a mom and wife, she was finding more balance and fulfillment in other areas, while still finding joy in work. This continued need for balance led her to the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, where she was able to do good work in the realm of economic and community development, while continuing to develop a healthy work-life balance.

“Through this period of developing greater self-awareness and learning to rest, I realized that as a leader, you have to first take care of yourself before you can care for others,” Holly says, explaining she really could have used the resources of CWLI during this time. She believes CWLI is capable of developing strong female relationships where women learn and grow and, in turn, empower other women.

“It feels like all my experiences—personal and professional—have led me to this role at CWLI. Now, I can empower other women to find what they’re needing and looking for and help them move to the next level of their careers.”

Plans for CWLI

As the new executive director of CWLI, Holly is looking forward to evaluating the organization’s trajectory of growth and developing metrics to demonstrate the impact CWLI has in the community. This insight, she says, will help quantify the impact CWLI is having on helping women reach the next level of their careers or increase their salaries, highlighting opportunities for new programming as well as how current programming can be strengthened.

“We have a wide variety of women engaged in the organization, and we reach so many different pockets within the community,” Holly says. “It’s important to me that our programs effectively carry our mission of increasing women’s leadership capabilities and influence to all of our members.”

As she dives into her first month of work, Holly is excited to experience the many programs CWLI has to offer and to evaluate member opinions on the programs.

“The Financial Empowerment series currently underway is so important for women,” she explains. “Being educated on how to be your own financial expert and how to reduce liabilities and invest… it can only make us stronger.”

Similarly, she thinks CWLI’s Finance in the Boardroom series gives women additional information to improve their presence in impactful work and service situations. “It educates and empowers women to truly sit at the table on corporate and nonprofit boards across the community, and to help make the hard decisions. The cost to attend this programming is relatively low and a great way to reduce any anxiety about handling financial information. It’s important that more women engage in making financial decisions at the board level, and these programs help them to do just that.”

As a professional female in the Chattanooga community, Holly has noticed many women seem to struggle with self-doubt. She expresses a wish to magically endow every woman in Chattanooga with a healthy dose of self-confidence.

“So often, women doubt their own unique abilities and end up bowing out of opportunities for advancement—taking themselves out of the game before anyone else can invite them to play. Don’t do it—don’t throw away your shot,” she says.

She encourages women to still be self-aware and to recognize areas that need improvement, but to learn not to uniformly discount their abilities to lead.

As a mother to a teen daughter, Holly hopes her work with CWLI can show her daughter the many paths to becoming an independent woman and executive.

“As executive director, I’ll get to be part of an organization that directly touches women’s lives and helps them grow personally and professionally. Additionally, CWLI has been blessed with very strong volunteer and staff leadership, so I’m walking into a healthy organization. I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather be.”

To read Holly Ashley’s Member Spotlight, click here.