Ashley Sondon

I attribute my success to being raised by a family that was very caring and dedicated to all of us succeeding and supporting one another. I definitely attribute my success to that, and the work ethic and the morals that they instilled in me. I always think about, too, like, am I making my little self happy? I think I owe a lot of it to her and my experiences, and making sure that I'm someone that would make her proud, and I'm someone that she would look up to, and I want to be that kind of role model for others. I'm just making sure that I'm leading the world a little better than how I found it.

The best career advice I've ever received is to do what you love, because you're gonna spend more time in your life at work than you're gonna do anything else, so make sure that what you're doing is something you're passionate about, and something that you feel fulfilled in. I'm so grateful that I received that advice so early on in my career, because everyone's gonna have hard days in their career. I don't think there's anyone that has a job that doesn't have a day where they're like, oh my goodness, I'm overwhelmed, or I have so much on my plate. But if you're doing what you love at the end of the day, it's gonna make it easier to push through, or easier to figure things out, or you're gonna view it as, instead of something that's difficult or a pain, you're gonna view it as a challenge that you want to push through and succeed in. That's my biggest advice, and I work a lot with college kids that come through for tours, or for different projects that I help them out with, and that's always the advice I give them - make sure whatever you do is something you're passionate about.

The advice I would give is to work really hard, and to really focus on what you're good at and passionate about, and just put your energy into that, and making sure that you're keeping up with everything. When I first started out in my career, I would subscribe to every newsletter about anything marketing communications, and I would sit in the morning and read on them and see what the trends were, and things like that. Just being a good networker - you don't have to be super close with every single person you meet, or a salesperson to every single person you meet, but make sure that you make those connections, and you never know where that will lead you, and leaving a good impression on someone will always push you forward in the long end. I think my biggest piece of advice is just to truly do what makes you happy, and you're never too old to figure out that, oh, maybe I don't like this, maybe I want to make a change. Never feel like it's too late to go back to school, or it's too late to try a new career path, or to work for a company that you never envisioned yourself working for, because you never thought was in your reach. Everyone is capable of doing big things and being successful, and I think as long as you work hard, and are kind, you can get anywhere in life.

Working in nonprofit, there's a lot of challenges from just tighter budgets, obviously, to grant cuts that happen. I think there's a lot of work that nonprofits have to do with sometimes very little resources. While that's a difficulty, it always presents me a challenge of, like, okay, what connection can I make? What project can I do? Things like that to make the difference, because we always here have a mindset of, okay, there's this challenge, but it doesn't mean we're not gonna do it, or we're not gonna fulfill the promise we made to the community. We're gonna find a way around it to get creative and really think it out. There were big budget cuts last year, and that was obviously a very scary time when grants were getting cut and things like that, but I'm really grateful that I work with a lot of people who share that same passion as me, that it's not a, okay, we're being stopped here, it's, okay, there's a bump in the road, how do we figure it out?

At Goodwill Central Texas, we have three values, and they're on our walls everywhere, and they're values that I really hold close to me, so it's be caring, be innovative, be accountable. The one that, to me, is the most important is the Be Caring. I always try to remind my team members and myself that you don't know what's going on with someone behind closed doors, so being respectful and kind and supportive of everyone around you and in your life is extremely important. You don't know one impact, like, your smile, your kindness has on someone. I'm really a big believer in that, and being caring, and just we all live on this planet together, and we're all humans at the end of the day, and we have good times and bad times, and I think something that I try to promote is just going above and beyond in kindness, because I think that's something that's badly very lacking nowadays, and everyone can use a little bit of kindness.