Ashley is a founding member of the Social Business Team at Southwest Airlines with more than 10 years of social and communication experience.

In her current role, Ashley is responsible for the Listening and Social Care strategies for the airline’s social business practice. She also leads a high performing team of Specialists that are tasked with supporting the transformation of Southwest Airlines into a truly social business.

Prior to this role, Ashley launched the airlines’ state-of-the-art Listening Center and served in several other capacities within the Communication & Outreach Department.

I’ve been at GM for 23+ years and it has been a terrific ride as I’ve had the opportunity to work in several different areas and experience multiple assignments across the organization.

Today I’m leading the work being done around ‘Social for the Enterprise’ for General Motors. Here, we execute common processes, tools, policy and governance for social media across the globe.

I came to the CoE position from the Communications function, where I led the social team which focused around General Motors’ corporate Facebook and Twitter engagement, but also corporate social video strategy, blogger outreach to support corporate communications objectives and overall corporate and brand social media strategy.

I have worked in: corporate reputation, employee and dealer communications, service and parts, divisional/brand/marketing, and manufacturing. These diverse experiences allow me to see the holistic view of all of General Motors communications needs. And enables me to provide insight to help drive improvements in processes, procedures and bring new thinking to the table.

But what brings a smile to my face? Academics. From an early age, my father hounded me to death to get an education. Way back, in 1989, I earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in communication from Saginaw Valley State University. From there, I attended Central Michigan University and earned a Master’s degree in business with an organizational communication concentration. And I said no more. But, to get my dad off my back, I took one doctoral class. And then, in 2002, I completed my Ph.D. in organizational communications from Wayne State University. Yet, dad still hounds me. He thinks I need to be bi-lingual. So, maybe that’s next.