Member since October 2025
Ashley Andersen, MSW, PCC, is the Founder and CEO of EzraSage, where she helps organizations execute change without sacrificing performance or breaking their people. With a clinical background in social work and psychology, and over a decade of executive coaching experience, Ashley specializes in building the emotional infrastructure that determines whether transformation succeeds or fails.
Drawing on her MSW training, Professional Certified Coach credentials, and certification as a Dare to Lead™ Facilitator, Ashley works with leadership teams navigating restructuring, scaling, transitions, and culture change. She is known for making neuroscience and behavioral psychology immediately applicable to real-world change challenges—helping leaders accelerate adoption, reduce resistance, and maintain performance during transformation.
As a speaker, Ashley delivers the rare combination of relatable stories and research-backed insights that shift how leaders think about change. Audiences leave with practical frameworks they can apply immediately—not just inspiration, but tools to navigate the human side of transformation. Whether keynoting for hundreds or facilitating intimate leadership sessions, Ashley creates the kind of insight and dialogue that doesn't happen in high-pressure work environments, helping teams break through resistance and build capacity for ongoing change.
Professionally, I love that moment where people realize their strength and see a way to start claiming greater agency. Some might call it the "a-ha moment", and for me specifically I especially love the a-ha's that are the catalyst to meaningful shifts that individuals and teams are making. Sometimes this is the recognition of a long-standing belief that's presenting a problem for a leader, or a team moving from being defensive and closed off to starting to build closeness and trust.
Personally, I love creating moments of connection and memory-building for people. This often comes in the form of hosting dinner parties where people can settle in, engage in conversation, and disconnect from the pressures of the outside world for a bit (while enjoying some really good food!).
Over the years I've come to realize that people love (and learn best from) the most vulnerable stories, particularly when they involve me falling on my face in some kind of way. I try to bring stories to the stage that create humanity and demonstrate that, when it comes to the topics I speak about, it's more of a journey and less about reaching a final destination.
One story that resonates well with audiences has to do with my first leadership role working to resolve conflict between two team members that was negatively impacting the team morale and productivity. I handled it all wrong — leaning too heavily into power, denying any opportunity for the team to discuss and share, operating from a stance of shutting down behavior rather than seeking to better understand the root cause of the behavior. I failed to appreciate the paradox of needing to hold people accountable while also needing to come from a place of compassion. It was a great learning moment (several moments) and I find that others have often experienced something similar.
I've never been a fan of planning too far into the future, or at least not holding too tightly to those plans, because when you stay open to possibilities, a lot can happen—and that's the case for me. I began my career as a social worker, always interested in understand human behavior on a deeper level, and then using that understanding to help others. I found myself in leadership development and executive coaching because I became frustrated with the lack of real behavioral change occurring through more traditional training approaches (this was well before coaching was as popular as it is today).
I fought to start a coaching program in the organization I was at at the time and eventually built and grew that division to serve hundreds of internal employees and leaders. As other opportunities emerged, I followed them — designing and building leadership development programs, creating multi-functional coaching programs, building communities of emerging and tenured corporate leaders, and more.
I found myself speaking at first by chance. Someone would hear about a program I created or was a part of and want me to come and share with their audience—so I did. And I loved it. Over time my speaking shifted from one-off invitations to intentional keynotes and breakout sessions for varied audiences—different industries, functions, levels, etc.
Over the years I've come to realize that people love (and learn best from) the most vulnerable stories, particularly when they involve me falling on my face in some kind of way. I try to bring stories to the stage that create humanity and demonstrate that, when it comes to the topics I speak about, it's more of a journey and less about reaching a final destination.
One story that resonates well with audiences has to do with my first leadership role working to resolve conflict between two team members that was negatively impacting the team morale and productivity. I handled it all wrong — leaning too heavily into power, denying any opportunity for the team to discuss and share, operating from a stance of shutting down behavior rather than seeking to better understand the root cause of the behavior. I failed to appreciate the paradox of needing to hold people accountable while also needing to come from a place of compassion. It was a great learning moment (several moments) and I find that others have often experienced something similar.
I've never been a fan of planning too far into the future, or at least not holding too tightly to those plans, because when you stay open to possibilities, a lot can happen—and that's the case for me. I began my career as a social worker, always interested in understand human behavior on a deeper level, and then using that understanding to help others. I found myself in leadership development and executive coaching because I became frustrated with the lack of real behavioral change occurring through more traditional training approaches (this was well before coaching was as popular as it is today).
I fought to start a coaching program in the organization I was at at the time and eventually built and grew that division to serve hundreds of internal employees and leaders. As other opportunities emerged, I followed them — designing and building leadership development programs, creating multi-functional coaching programs, building communities of emerging and tenured corporate leaders, and more.
I found myself speaking at first by chance. Someone would hear about a program I created or was a part of and want me to come and share with their audience—so I did. And I loved it. Over time my speaking shifted from one-off invitations to intentional keynotes and breakout sessions for varied audiences—different industries, functions, levels, etc.