Ashley Thiesen
Hi, I’m Ashley, and I’m really glad you’re here.
For most of my career, I’ve built things: businesses, teams, brands, communities, and big ideas. But underneath every venture, I’ve always been drawn to one thing most of all: people.
Why we decide what we decide. Why some of us leap and others stall. Why we can know exactly what to do… and still do the opposite.
When I started my first company at 23, I didn’t have words for any of that. I just knew I loved business, creativity, communication, and the puzzle of making things work.
The Modern Connection | Charleston
Founded in 2009. Built for 11 years. Acquired in 2020.
It started with a hunch, and became a career.
In 2009, I founded The Modern Connection, one of Charleston, SC’s early social media and digital marketing agencies, back when social media for business was still new territory.
Over the next 11 years, I built it from the ground up: leading a team, working with hundreds of businesses, teaching social media marketing, speaking at conferences, universities, and hospitals, appearing in the media, hosting a weekly radio segment, and becoming one of the early voices in Charleston, South Carolina’s growing digital marketing scene.
The company was acquired in 2020. (You may know me from those years as Ashley T. Caldwell.)
It was a masterclass in entrepreneurship, leadership, and what it really takes to build something from nothing.
I’ve never stayed in one lane.
Along the way, I’ve also built and operated hospitality businesses, led a national sales organization, created a community education initiative, taught, spoken, consulted, created content, and built a lifestyle brand.
I’ve been an entrepreneur, CEO, marketer, teacher, hospitality operator, content creator, team leader, and a mom.
Every chapter taught me something. But eventually, I became less interested in what people were building, and more interested in what was happening underneath.
Web Wednesday | 105.5 The Bridge, Charleston
Nine years of weekly radio, talking business and the ever-changing world of social media.
2016 | Center for Women & Southern Women’s Show
Finalist, Entrepreneurship, Influential Women in Business.
2014 | Forty Under 40
Charleston Regional Business Journal, for The Modern Connection.
Different versions of the same person, all asking the same question.
Then, I disappeared.
Which is probably a little ironic for someone who spent more than a decade helping businesses figure out how to show up online.
But about six years ago, I stopped.
I stopped performing for the internet. I stopped sharing where I was, what I was doing, what I was learning, who I was becoming. I stopped measuring my life in likes, comments, shares, and other people’s reactions to it.
Not because I had nothing to say. Because I had something much more important to do first.
I needed to know who I was when nobody was watching.
So I gave myself space to go inward. To heal. To dig deeper. To do my own subconscious work. To travel, explore, take risks, follow curiosity, and experience life without needing to turn every experience into content.
And life gave me plenty to work with.
I experienced deep loss. I lost my mom. I ended a twelve-year relationship. I said goodbye to the home and community I had known for nearly twenty years. I let go of relationships, friendships, identities, and pieces of my past that no longer felt true to who I was becoming.
There was a lot of releasing. A lot of tears. A lot of finally feeling the dang emotions I had kept buried for so long.
A lot of questioning.
A lot of sitting in the fog.
I wrote about that stretch, and what finally moved it, in Clearing the Fog.
And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t trying to get back to the person I had been.
I was coming home to myself. To my soul.
I’m stepping back into the world now. Not as a polished version of myself, and not as a personal brand carefully constructed for the internet.
As me.
And I feel a calling to reach back through the fog and offer a hand to people still finding their way through theirs.
That’s where everything shifted.
I’ve watched incredibly capable people have all the information they need… and still struggle to follow through.
I’ve lived that too.
You can have the strategy.
You can understand the problem.
You can genuinely want the outcome.
And still find yourself hesitating, overthinking, playing small, avoiding what you know matters, or repeating patterns you thought you’d outgrown.
So I kept asking: if strategy isn’t the issue, what is?
That question is what led me to PSYCH-K®.
Behind the scenes | Charleston
Creating educational content around social media and digital safety.
Now, I work underneath the strategy.
I’m a PSYCH-K® Facilitator and the founder of Elevate Grace, where I support business owners in exploring the subconscious beliefs and patterns that shape how they think, decide, lead, and grow.
I’m not here to tell you how to run your business. I’ve done the strategy work. I know what it can do. And I also know that even the best plan can only take you so far when the beliefs underneath it are pulling in another direction.
That’s the work I facilitate:
the belief underneath the decision,
the pattern underneath the behavior,
the thing that doesn’t “make sense,” but keeps showing up anyway.
And outside of work…
I’m a homeschool mom, a worldschooling nomadic traveler, a lifelong learner, and someone who still lights up over a new place, a deep conversation, a beautiful trail, a bumblebee asleep on a flower, or a quiet coffee shop with a good view.
I’m endlessly curious, about psychology, neuroscience, subconscious patterns, leadership, creativity, business, and the strange and wonderful ways they all overlap.
What makes people tick. Why we decide what we decide. Why some of us leap and others stall. Why we can know exactly what to do… and still do the opposite.
Most of that thinking ends up in Notes from the Fog.
These days I’m less interested in building a life that looks successful from the outside. I’m interested in building one that actually feels like mine.
Recently
Some of what I’ve been up to.
Six of the last twelve months were spent in Europe with my daughter. Worldschooling, mostly by train. Three years of nomadic travel all over the world.
For the people who like to know these things
Enneagram
3w4 · The Achiever
Ambitious and driven, with a creative streak and a strong need to express what makes me uniquely me.
Human Design
6/2 Manifesting Generator + Role Model
Fast-moving, multi-passionate, and energized by what excites me. I'm here to respond, experiment, and let experience turn into wisdom.
Astrology
Capricorn Sun
Ambitious, grounded, disciplined, and always thinking about what I'm building for the long game.
Astrology
Capricorn Rising
Poised, capable, and composed. I tend to come across as someone who knows what she's doing.
Astrology
Leo Moon
Warm, passionate, expressive, and a little more dramatic on the inside than my Capricorn exterior might suggest.
Personality
ENFP
Curious, imaginative, people-oriented, and always connecting dots. I'm energized by ideas, experiences, and meaningful connection.
Basically, I love variety, people, and new ideas. I like learning things, trying things, connecting dots, and following whatever sparks my curiosity next. So yes, a business built around people and subconscious patterns is pretty much my idea of a good time. Never a dull moment.
And these days, I’m less interested in building a life that looks successful from the outside.
I’m interested in building one that actually feels like mine.
Why the fog
You're not lost. You just can't see what's underneath.
Fog never moves the road. It just takes away your certainty about it. So you slow down, second-guess yourself, and stop committing to the turn.
Subconscious patterns can work the same way. They can make you hesitate, overthink, or keep circling the same decisions, even when you already know what you want.
The road is still there. The work is clearing what’s keeping you from seeing it.
More on where this metaphor comes from in Clearing the Fog.