Ashley Burns, Board Member

Principal Strategist & Founder

To scale 20+ years of strategic comms learnings and leadership, Ashley founded Well Positioned: a global narrative change agency pursuing healing, justice and joy.

From somatic listening sessions to ambivalent audience analyses and million-dollar digital campaigns – Ashley’s strategies, approach and impact across the country demonstrates the power of storytelling to fuel positive, intergenerational change.

Her proven ability to detect, discern and predict narrative patterns and community needs coupled with a commitment to remain curious, uniquely equip her to advise steadfast leaders, boards and coalitions dedicated to creating a better tomorrow. Drawing from her passion, proximity and professional expertise, Ashley creates high-impact strategies to help advocates and allies elevate their experiences and successful solutions to society’s most time-sensitive challenges. Whether with Fortune50, foundations, community organizers or social entrepreneurs, Ashley has spent her career discovering strategies to breakthrough “noisy” news environments, navigate linguistic landmines, and dispel disinformation in order to change harmful narratives.

Prior to founding Well Positioned, Ashley was a Principal and the founding director of RALLY’s Seattle office, an advocacy agency where she designed equity and justice communications campaigns to support education, health, housing, and economic empowerment across urban, rural and suburban communities across the US. Messaging research, design and dissemination were also critical components of developing effective audience engagement strategies. Before RALLY, Ashley led communications teams focused on international media events and global product launches for Microsoft, Minecraft Education, Skype in the Classroom, LEGO, NASA, and various startups. She serves on the Board of Trustees for the National Equity Project and a is former Albers Business School Mentor for her alma mater Seattle University. She and her brother recently created the Kevin Burns Jr. Memorial Scholarship in honor of their late brother killed in 1997. The scholarship supports underestimated first generation college students that want to leverage a business degree to unlock doors to their future and family legacy. The mother of two fierce and funny baby girls, Ashley and her husband split their time between South Seattle (WA) and Salvador, Bahia (Brazil).