February 28, 2018

Meet Ashley Elsey of Minerva Consulting

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Elsey.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Ashley. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Minerva Consulting was started out of my desire to live a more integrating existence, weaving my work life and home life together. I wanted the flexibility to be fully present with my children and intentional about the type of work I pursued. In 2003, my little girl was approaching a year and while I had a job I loved at Verizon, the entrepreneurial spirit welled up in my soul. With my baby on my hip, I decided to go for it. I landed one client and Minerva Consulting was born. My sister joined up as my partner and the two of us were off to the races. We rode the digital revolution, as the platforms of communication evolved faster than anyone could have imagined. As a duo, we were the IT department, the creative department, the copywriters and the accountants. Through all of this, we held tight to our belief that fundamentally we all want to be inspired.

I worked out of my house for several years until I found myself as a single mother. Facing that reality, I decided to take a leave of absence for an incredible opportunity serving President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush as the founding Vice President of Marketing and Communications at The George W. Bush Presidential Center. It was an honor of a lifetime and gave me experiences and learnings both personally and professionally that had a profound effect on how Minerva grew when I returned two years later.

At Minerva, I made a commitment to find staff and clients who shared our values and understood the power of stories and their transformative impact. Over the next five years, we grew from three people to nearly 20, outgrowing my living room and dining room where we worked every day and moving into offices in Richardson, TX. We continue to grow and opened our second location in Los Angeles, CA in 2017. We have the privilege of serving Fortune 10 companies, international and domestic nonprofits, policy-making institutions in Washington, D.C. and medium to small businesses on a mission. We feel honored to help all of our clients bring their mission to life through a strategic integration of messaging and storytelling.

Has it been a smooth road?
Running your own business is a bumpy, wild ride no matter what. Some of our struggles came from learning how to not only maintain but grow our standards of quality amidst accelerated growth, all while protecting our culture. This stretched us in ways that truly helped us define what we wanted Minerva to be and the team we needed to make it happen.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Minerva is a high-touch boutique consulting firm with offices in Dallas, TX and Los Angeles, CA. We are grounded in the belief that fundamentally we all want to be inspired and focus our work on integrated communications that create breakthrough messaging, humanize content, cultivate partnership and foster discipline and engagement. We provided communications consulting services that can include:
-Overall Communications Strategy
-Messaging and Brand Development
-Social Media Strategy and Execution
-Video Services (Live Capture, Documentaries, Animations)
-Content Creation and Design (Infographics, Social Graphics, Collateral)
-Web Development
-Live Event Concepts and Execution

Minerva has won numerous international and domestic awards for its work. A certified Women’s Business Enterprise National Council member, Minerva is consistently ranked as one of the Best Places to Work by The Dallas Business Journal.

I am most proud of the relationships we develop: both internally with our employees and externally with our clients. Our team does not want to just deliver a product that was ordered. We care about the “why” that is motivating our clients. Whether it is a policy that needs to be implemented, an employee campaign to be launched, or a societal issue that must be known; these things matter to us on a personal level and we believe it is reflected in our work.

What’s your favorite memory from childhood?
My favorite memories are sitting around the table at night playing Canasta or watching movies. Being together was the most fun of all.

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