Drinks with Ashley—because Texas wasn’t big enough
20211
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Drinks with Ashley—because Texas wasn’t big enough

By Dawnell Smith

Ashley Boyd caught herself off guard this summer when she complained about the rain—four days in a row of it. Where she grew up, rain came as a blessing.

Ashley as a kid with her grandpa on the river. Photo Courtesy of Laurinda Boyd.

“You never get upset at rain in Texas,” she explained. “You’ve got cattle to water and there are wildfires, so you never take rain for granted. You’re always aware of your reliance on it. And the dangers of it, too.”

But Ashley’s transformation into an Alaskan is almost complete, so bemoaning days and weeks of summer downpours comes naturally. Clear skies and sunshine is what you don’t take for granted. Though Ashley still feels like a Texan, her baby Lachlan is Alaska-born, her partner Colin, too, and now more of her friends come from Alaska than not. “Now it feels less like a place to live and more like home,” she said.

This is not what Ashley expected when she took an office manager position with Trustees seven years ago. Back then, she talked about doing the Alaska thing for a few years, but she no way wanted to call this “too cold and too dark for too long” place home.

At the time she had mostly met Trustees folks and their friends. “They were all super hike-y people,” she said. “And yeah, sure, I like going outside, but I don’t have to climb a mountain and sleep on a ledge.”

A lot has changed since then. She met plenty of other Alaskans who wanted to hang out, listen to music, and talk politics. Her family has expanded into Alaska now and her job has grown some too.

She runs the office and handles financials as administrative director as always, but she also participates in or leads organizational committees and major projects, like moving the office across town or coordinating events for Trustees’ 50th anniversary year.

In the flow chart of trouble shooting, you inevitably end up at Ashley’s office or blowing up her phone.

Overshares

Ashley celebrating Christmas with Rob Alverez at Retama Park.

It doesn’t take long to notice that Ashley likes talking to people. She’s got stories to tell and doesn’t mind sharing them. For a time, we even added an Ashley-inspired line item to the staff meeting agenda: Overshares.

Her mom Laurinda Boyd said Ashley was born a people person. “When she was little, I had to keep my eye on her because she was so friendly I was afraid she would just walk off with them,” she said.

Ashley doesn’t shy away from delicate subjects either. She likes to address conflicts directly, and she loves a good debate and will talk about politics with everyone, even the old timers at the bar who have something to say about nearly everything and nothing good to say about the rest. Mind you, she isn’t looking for a fight, but for common ground.

Her longtime friend Pearl Alvarez described her as “an inclusive and approachable individual who engages with all in a welcoming and impartial manner.”

Perhaps the first line in an Ashley manifesto might go something like, “People are in this world together whether they like it or not, so we might as well figure out how to like it.”

Ashley at 5 years old. Photo courtesy of Laurinda Boyd.

Which isn’t to say she doesn’t have strong views about things. Her family used to say she would  grow up to be a lawyer because of her propensity to argue a point. Relentlessly. Her mother even held court because of Ashley’s debates about family rules and decisions until Ashley made one too many winning oral arguments.

But Ashley hung on to that notion of lawyering through college, taking courses in political science, economics, and all the subjects that might prep someone for law school. A U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps recruiter tried to get her to sign on, and she even took the Law School Admission Test before reflecting on what she really wanted to do.

A friend stepped in with some advice: Only go to law school because you really want to and find joy in it, because otherwise you will rack up debt and have to put in 70-plus hour weeks doing what you really don’t love.

“I realized I wouldn’t really love reading and writing all day,” said Ashley, “so I worked rather than go to graduate school.”

She took retail supervision and management jobs as well as event organization positions where she managed big festivals as event coordinator, vendor coordinator, and director of events. She liked how the work changed all the time and required solving different challenges. Nothing is ever the same with events, she said. The people change, the nature of the event, the kind of problems you have to solve. One reason she left her prior job is because the owner overworked everyone, and she couldn’t see a break in sight. He asked her to come back, but the Trustees job offer meant getting out of the churn.

Coming to Trustees meant adjusting to a different pace, with fewer clusters of tasks coming at her from all directions, more methodic processes, and far fewer people coming at her with problems, though she still deals with plenty of trouble. Here’s a list of some of them:  I can’t access the server; the website has gone haywire; we need more vegan options at the board event; do you know where the “such and such” is; the side door won’t close; wait, my laptop got stolen?; the musician can’t make it to the show in two hours, and also the keg won’t work.

The land, the law, the people

Ash with friends Tara and Joy at Springfest in Texas. Photo courtesy of Rock Jacobsen.

Ashley first came to Alaska in 2016 to visit her sister Katie, who threw a Christmas party for people who didn’t have family in Alaska. That’s how she met Chad Carter, a friend of her sister’s and the former Trustees’ office manager. At the time, Ashley wasn’t happy with her work situation in Texas.

While hanging out with Chad and learning what he did for a living, she told him, “If you ever leave your job, tell Katie.”

He did, and Ashley applied. It was 2018 and she had already quit the event position that had turned sour by then and had a job offer in San Diego when she interviewed with Trustees. Her bags were packed for a future of California dreaming when she got Trustees’ job offer.

Why did she choose Alaska over California? What pulled her away from perfect weather and proximity to the American southwest to head north? Well, it came down to the nature of the work. The position with a homeowner’s association in San Diego sounded fine, but it lacked a throughline—the possibility of doing work that mattered in a deeper way. For Ashley, the Trustees job felt more like work that mattered.

As her mom put it, “Ashley has always wanted to work for a nonprofit. She is a fixer and a very hard worker. When she makes a commitment, she is all in.”

Putting out fires

Ashley grew up around ranches and always felt the importance of caring for land and animals. She has always been aware of conservation issues on some level, but when learning more about Trustees before applying for the job, the thing that drew her in was how the work impacted people. “I care about animals and climate, but I’m more committed to the human part and whether people can live their lives and their ways of life.”

Ashley on the ranch. Photo courtesy of Laurinda Boyd.

Working at Trustees has influenced how she sees these issues now. “Despite being geographically separated from her personal network, she derives satisfaction from her work with Trustees and has experienced substantial personal growth as a result,” said her friend Pearl. “Her empathy and kindness and openness has flourished, and I am honored to call her my friend.”

Ashley has in turn influenced the people around her. She thrives in putting out fires and taking care of the machinery that lets others do their work. She overshares and also welcomes overshares. She wants to understand more. She loves a good podcast and says she listens to too many of them, because it helps when she’s multi-tasking. She likes wellRED (three southern rural liberal comedians), The Dollop history podcast, The Focus Group, Lawfare’s Rational Security, and series like Slowburn and Empire City.

Sometimes she has long conversations with folks who grumble about “greenies” who get in the way of drilling or mining. She says when she talks through it with them, they usually agree that corporations by nature of their profit mission will do anything to maximize profits, including cutting whatever corners they can; and that most people also agree that it’s important to have healthy fish and caribou, clean air and water.

“At the end of the day, environmental lawyers hold corporations and policy makers accountable to the things people have agreed matter for everyone, like clean water, healthy salmon runs, and so on,” she said. “Environmental law is basically about protecting things we all care about.”

Remember those “rivers of fire” of the past? Well environmental law and lawyers are how we put them behind us, she said, and they’re how we’ll keep them there.

Ashley doesn’t mind letting folks at the bar know where she works and then hear their smack talk. She knows how to make the case.