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Ashley Ellis
Writer - Filmmaker - Social Impact Designer
Professional Background
Ashley Ellis is a distinguished storyteller and community builder dedicated to inspiring empathy, agency, and radical imagination through innovative narrative forms. With an extensive background in both academia and the creative industry, Ashley has worked across various roles that leverage the power of storytelling to foster social change and community engagement.
As a co-founder of Sankoré, Ashley has played a pivotal role in creating a vibrant platform dedicated to empowering voices from underrepresented communities. Her entrepreneurial spirit shines through her commitment to nurturing creative talent and fostering collaborative storytelling processes that engage broader audiences.
Before founding Sankoré, Ashley held the position of Fundraising and Development Manager at The Children's Radio Foundation, where she was instrumental in securing funding to support programs that educate and empower children through radio and audio storytelling. Her strategic approach to fundraising and development has helped to implement programs that not only provide valuable skills but also encourage young people's self-expression.
Ashley’s role as Founder and Filmmaker at Emerald City Arts underscores her passion for film and media as tools for personal and communal storytelling. Focusing on the intersections of culture, identity, and social justice, her work at Emerald City Arts has contributed significantly to the cultural discourse surrounding contemporary issues.
In addition to her experiences in founding organizations, Ashley has also served as the Program Director at GlobalGirl Media, where she directed programs that amplify the voices of young women through digital media and journalism. Her commitment to social change and empowerment through storytelling is evident in her work, which seeks to provide young girls with the skills and platforms necessary to tell their stories.
Moreover, Ashley has contributed her academic expertise as a Seminar & Tutorial Instructor at the University of Cape Town, shaping the next generation of storytellers while guiding students through the complexities of narrative construction and critical analysis in film studies.
Throughout her diverse career, Ashley has participated in various projects that involve creative production and project management, including her roles as Writer and Creative Producer at Afrobougee Group and Project Manager at Wondros. Each position reflects her multifaceted skills in storytelling, production, and community engagement, furthering her mission to create impactful narratives.
Ashley also served as an LA Hub Ambassador at Sandbox, where she connected creative minds and facilitated collaboration among innovators. As a Development Assistant at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, she laid the groundwork for her extensive knowledge of the cinematic landscape, which continues to inform her work today.
Education and Achievements
Ashley Ellis's educational journey has equipped her with a robust foundation in the arts and humanities. She obtained her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Film/Cinema/Video Studies from the University of Cape Town, where her research focused on the power of film as a medium for storytelling and its ability to generate empathy and understanding within communities.
Her academic pursuits began at the University of Southern California, where she earned a Master of Professional Writing in Screenwriting. This program provided her with a deep understanding of narrative structure and character development, essential skills that she utilizes in both her artistic and professional endeavors. Previously, she also received her Bachelor of Arts in English from USC, which laid the groundwork for her passion for storytelling and exceptional writing abilities.
Ashley's educational background, combined with her diverse professional experiences, enables her to approach projects with a unique and enriched perspective that blends theory and practice in striking ways.
Achievements
Throughout her career, Ashley has cultivated a rich tapestry of achievements that underscore her dedication to storytelling and community engagement. Notable among these is her role in launching impactful initiatives through Sankoré that seek to build inclusive platforms for marginalized voices. Her commitment to fostering collaboration and creativity in storytelling has not only raised awareness of critical social issues but has also started meaningful conversations within communities.
In her time with The Children's Radio Foundation, Ashley's fundraising efforts directly contributed to the establishment of numerous youth-centered programs that empower children through creative audio education. This work has helped countless young individuals gain confidence and a platform to express their stories.
Ashley’s work in film, both as a filmmaker and producer, showcases her innovative vision and passion for advancing the art of filmmaking. By using her platform at Emerald City Arts and through collaborations with various organizations, she has created significant narrative works that resonate with and inspire audiences on multiple levels.
In summary, Ashley Ellis exemplifies a dynamic blend of academic rigor, creative passion, and social responsibility. Through her career, she has successfully harnessed the power of storytelling to uplift communities, inspire change, and advocate for inclusive narratives. As she continues her journey, Ashley remains a vital force in the storytelling landscape, committed to weaving stories that empower individuals and connect communities on deeper levels.
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Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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