I started my career as a hostess.

Not the most obvious beginning for an operational systems architect, but every role since then has added a layer to how I show up for the teams I work with today. Restaurants, salons, startups, property management companies, coworking spaces. Each one taught me something different about how people work, what breaks down, and what it takes to make things run well.

The turning point came over a decade ago. My stepmother passed away from cancer, and before she did, she told me to go back to school. So I did. I enrolled in an admin and bookkeeping program in Calgary and stepped into a career I could not have predicted. From receptionist to executive assistant to project manager to onboarding specialist to the work I do today.

Somewhere along the way, a female CEO I worked for said something that permanently changed how I operate: "Come to me with a solution, not the problem." That one sentence shifted me from being directed to leading. It is still how I show up in every engagement.

I started Ashley J. Eng because I wanted the freedom to work with purpose-led founders making a real difference, without the burnout I had experienced and watched others experience. I know what it feels like to be the only person who sees what is breaking. I also know what it feels like when systems finally work.

Outside of work, my mornings start in stillness, before the day asks anything of me. That's the same place my meditation practice lives. Rooted in Buddhism, where sobriety grew out of that same ground rather than sitting apart from it. The rest of my life moves from there. I sew, I sing, and I still have music out in the world from my years dedicated to my craft. I'm slowly learning Spanish to find my way back to my roots. When I can, I travel the world. None of this is about the activity. It's about staying clear enough to actually be present for it.