Media & press
For podcast hosts, writers and event planners
I’m Ashley Thiesen, a Certified PSYCH-K® Facilitator and former agency founder. I talk about the part of business that never makes it into the pitch deck: what’s running underneath the strategy, and who you are after you’ve built or sold the business.
Bios, photos, topics and sample questions are all here. If you need something that isn’t, email me and I’ll get it to you.
For show notes and introductions
Guest bio
Written in the third person so you can paste it straight into show notes, an episode page or an event program. Pick the length that fits.
Short · about 50 words · reads well aloud
Ashley Thiesen is a Certified PSYCH-K® Facilitator and the founder of Elevate Grace. She built The Modern Connection, one of Charleston’s early social media agencies, ran it for 11 years and sold it in 2020. Now she works with business owners on the subconscious side of building, and leaving, a company.
Long · about 150 words
Ashley Thiesen started her first company, The Modern Connection, at 23. Over 11 years, it grew into one of Charleston, South Carolina’s early social media agencies, where Ashley led the team and helped businesses navigate a rapidly changing digital landscape.
She taught social media marketing at the College of Charleston, delivered keynotes and workshops for conferences, chambers and business groups, wrote magazine columns, and spent nine years on weekly radio. The company was acquired in 2020.
After selling her agency in 2020, Ashley stepped away from the business world and chose a very different season of life: homeschooling her daughter, traveling, gardening, and exploring the deeper work of subconscious change. What began as a quiet period away from entrepreneurship eventually led her to PSYCH-K® and to the work she does today with business owners.
Today, Ashley works with business owners on the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. (Formerly Ashley T. Caldwell.)
For show notes and episode descriptions
Conversations Ashley is good for
Guest topics, also in the third person and ready to use. Best fit: shows and publications for founders, business owners and people rethinking what success is supposed to feel like.
Who are you after the exit?
Why owners can feel lost, flat or even guilty after selling a business they wanted to sell, and what Ashley learned from selling her own agency.
Why knowing better doesn’t change anything
The gap between insight and action, and what’s often running underneath the things we say we want to change.
The part of you that doesn’t want to be seen
After a decade in social media, marketing and radio, Ashley knows a thing or two about visibility. She also knows that understanding how to be visible and feeling safe being seen are two very different things.
Disappearing on purpose
Why Ashley stepped away from the online business world for six years after selling her company, what she discovered in the process, and what it looked like to come back as herself instead of her old job title.
Questions you could ask me
Use them, skip them or go somewhere else entirely. I’m happy to follow the conversation.
- 01You built a successful agency and then sold it. What surprised you most about letting it go?
- 02What were you doing during the six years you were offline?
- 03What is PSYCH-K®, in plain language? And what isn’t it?
- 04Why doesn’t knowing what to do make us do it?
- 05You spent a decade helping businesses get visible. Why is being seen still so hard for so many owners?
- 06What do founders get wrong about life after an exit?
- 07What belief did you have to change before you could sell your company?
Where you may have heard me
Before the quiet years
Most of this is from my agency years, when I went by Ashley T. Caldwell, and most of it isn’t online anymore. It happened anyway.
Columns, radio and TV
105.5 The Bridge
“Web Wednesday,” a weekly radio segment on business and social media, for nine years
SKIRT! Magazine
Columnist, on social media and tech trends, as The Modern Connection
Art Mag Charleston
Columnist, on social media and tech trends, as The Modern Connection
Hatch Tribe
Monthly video contributor on social media for business owners, and a speaker at Hatch Tribe events
Local TV
Go-to social media expert for recurring segments, from business marketing to lifestyle pieces
Events
Media sponsor for Charleston Fashion Week, the Charleston International Film Festival and many area festivals and events.
Teaching and speaking
Instructor, Social Media Marketing, College of Charleston School of Professional Studies (Center for Continuing and Professional Education)
Founder, Generation Smart (2011 to 2015), focused on keeping kids and teens safe online
Faculty, social media and digital marketing, Compost University
Mentor on entrepreneurship, personal branding and social media for students at the College of Charleston, the Art Institute of Charleston, and several area high schools and middle schools.
Keynote speaker and resident social media expert at industry conferences, plus years of hands-on workshops training business owners in social media and digital marketing.
Industry conferences and associations in construction, landscape architecture, composting, pottery, veterinary medicine, law, finance, real estate and more.
Social media subject matter expert for the Harbor Entrepreneur Center, and a panelist at BoomTown ROI, Charleston AMA and a young members’ panel at The Harbor Club.
Spoke or trained for Medical University of South Carolina, Art Institute of Charleston, Charleston Chamber of Commerce, Summerville Chamber of Commerce, Charleston Digital Corridor, SCORE, NAWBO, ABWA, Center for Women and many more.
Recognition
- Forty Under 40, Charleston Regional Business Journal (2014)
- Finalist, Entrepreneurship, Influential Women in Business, Center for Women and the Southern Women’s Show (2016)
On camera
Local TV’s social media expert
A local TV segment from my agency years. As the founder of The Modern Connection, I was local TV’s go-to social media expert, on business marketing and on lifestyle pieces like this one on online dating safety. The topics have changed since then. How I show up on camera hasn’t.
Photos
Photos
Free to use alongside an interview, feature or event listing about me. Please don’t alter them beyond cropping, and credit the photographer listed under each one.
For your notes
The details
- Name
- Ashley Thiesen (formerly Ashley T. Caldwell)
- Title
- Founder, Elevate Grace · Certified PSYCH-K® Facilitator
- Previously
- Founder, The Modern Connection (2009 to 2020, acquired)
- Education
- B.A. in Communications with a focus in Media Management & Leadership Studies, University of Colorado
- Based in
- The Carolinas, USA. Available for remote interviews anywhere.
- Online
- ElevateGrace.com · LinkedIn · @LifeWithAshleyT
A note on how to introduce me
PSYCH-K® is a facilitated process for changing subconscious beliefs. It isn’t hypnosis, therapy or business consulting, and I’m not a therapist or a coach. “PSYCH-K® facilitator” is the right title. PSYCH-K® is a registered trademark of the PSYCH-K® Centre International. More on how it works →
