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Ashleigh Owens - From Human Rights to Rock & Roll · She’s Smart

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to She Smart, the podcast where we celebrate the stories,
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passions, and brilliance of women doing incredible things in their work,
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their communities, and their lives. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
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Today's guest is Ashley Owens, an extraordinary woman whose life story stretches
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from the beaches of Western Australia to the boardrooms of the United Nations,
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with a whole lot of rock music in between.
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Ashley is the deputy director at Shift, where she works at the intersection
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of business and human rights, helping global companies respect human dignity
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through thoughtful systemic change.
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And as if that weren't enough, she's also the lead singer of a local band, Teacup Sally.
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Yes, a rock singer who moonlights in international policy.
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In this episode, we talk about her unexpected journey from being a cheerleader
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in Japan and to studying international law, writing policy for global banks,
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and writing her first original song.
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She's brilliant, she's bold, and she makes you want to dig a little deeper into
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how the world works. And maybe go start a band while you're at it.
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So get cozy as we connect, learn, and laugh together on She's Smart. We'll be right back.
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Music.
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This is the most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life. ever. Yeah.
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Extremely creative. It's so freaking fun. Just to get to do this and talk and hang out and learn.
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It's really kind of amazing. You found your calling. You call it in Japanese
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ikigai. It's like combines what you're good at with purpose, etc.
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When you find these Venn diagrams that overlap. It's called the ikigai.
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Well, I have found my ikigai. Purpose for living. I have found my ikigai. This is it.
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Amazing. Well, thank you for being on the podcast so we can launch into it.
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I want to get to Japan. I want to get to all the places you lived.
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You grew up in Australia. I did. How long did you grow up in Australia?
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My young life. So I was in a little beach town about an hour south of Perth.
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Perth is the world's most isolated capital city.
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It's the capital of the state of Western Australia, which is kind of the size
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of Texas. The capital city is 2 million people.
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I'm from an hour south of that. So I'm from nowhere, nowhere.
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And this beach holiday town where I grew up. had a
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farm in the middle of it just as i left they cut up
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the farm flooded it and turned it into canals
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like the city of venice unfortunately we just sold
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the property of course all the house values went up
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but yeah i was growing up in western australia by the beach were you a beach
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girl were you always at the beach i was often at the beach but this kind of
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irish skin yeah we don't like it yeah the the hole in the ozone layer in west
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australia so i was often burned Grew up near the beach. Then I went to school.
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I got a scholarship to an all-girls school and my world kind of opened up when I was about 13.
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What all-girls school did you go to? Was it in Perth or did you go to Sydney?
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Where were you at that point? It was in Perth.
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It just blew my mind. We didn't have a cinema in my town.
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This all-girls school had a theater with tiered seating, balcony,
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an Olympic-sized swimming pool and lights around the mirrors.
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It was a completely incredible experience for me. It opened up a lot of opportunities
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once I was there and I got to discover performing arts and a whole different group of people.
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Oh, wow. Did your love for performing arts start then? Yes. You're like, I need a stage.
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Right. In some ways. Yeah. Get that. So then you went to law school?
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Right. So from high school, I went to law school, but I realized pretty quickly
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that I wanted to see the world.
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In my elementary school, they taught Japanese.
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So this was the 90s when Japan was in its bubble economically,
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and the Australian government was enthusiastic about young people learning Asian
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languages, and in particular Japanese, to facilitate more trade.
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And so this group of kind of, you know, this gaggle of young Aussie kids learned Japanese.
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And I absolutely loved it, but I think had it been any other language,
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I probably would have loved it as well. It was my ticket to the world.
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I was a languages, you know, humanities person. After that, I just kept scheming ways to get to Japan.
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I went on exchange in high school. I did a year of college in Japan.
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When I got back, I immediately got a scholarship to do that.
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When I got back, I started researching how to get bursaries to go study in Vienna.
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I was always on the move. Okay, nomadic. Yeah.
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Is that an Australian trait? Because so many of my friends who are Australian,
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they all traveled. It was like almost in their blood to do that.
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Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it stems from being isolated. you
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know geographically and in some ways when
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I was there back then a little culturally isolated and
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this desire to just get out
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into the world yeah so then you went to law school I
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went to law school I did a degree in Japanese and law which was a little unusual
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okay that opened doors for me because it meant that I ended up after law school
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finding a way to get a job in a law firm in Japan on the strength of the fact
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that I also spoke Japanese.
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This was a British law firm that kind of looked down a little bit on the Aussie graduates.
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Okay. All right. But couldn't function without the Aussie lawyer's ability to interact with clients.
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It was a very nice time in my life when I had flights home and my rent paid
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and all that kind of thing.
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Oh, that had to have been a really interesting dynamic working in Japan.
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Culturally, all of the businesses are a little bit different in different countries
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and how they work. How is it different working in Japan versus working in the United States?
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Like, what are some pieces that really stand out?
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Japanese corporate culture is kind of, in some ways, still a bastion of very
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traditional Japanese mindset.
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I'd like to tell the story about when I was on exchange to a Japanese university,
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I decided to become a cheerleader.
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So I had only—stay with me, it connects.
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I had only seen cheerleaders in American movies. I thought, wouldn't it make
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a great story if I came to study in this Japanese university and I became a cheerleader.
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So I became a cheerleader. I was the only foreign cheerleader on the squad.
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And we had these cute little outfits. We were called the Eagles.
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But what I quickly discovered was that the cultural underpinnings were far beyond
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my comprehension. It looked like American cheerleading.
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The Japanese used to have cheerleaders in front of the army to rev them up for
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battle. In many ways, a lot of that was retained.
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In this cheerleading group, you had to know who was more senior, who was more junior.
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You couldn't drink water until the more senior person had drunk water.
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I spent hours one time just bowing over and over again. We call it hanamitsu.
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It's like a flower road where we're all just bowing.
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And the point is that when I got into the Japanese corporate world.
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I was sitting in a boardroom or in a meeting and I would be like,
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that's the head cheerleader.
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Wow. That's the one that comes under the head cheerleader. That's the senpai
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kohai, like the senior and the junior and knowing my place.
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The person who's talking a lot isn't necessarily the person making the decision.
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A lot of that cultural learning, I was able to bring it into that world.
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Oh, that's fascinating. You had no idea that it was setting you up to really
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understand that social dynamic in those business meetings. Right. That's amazing.
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So you're working in Japan, and what led you to focus on human rights?
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Because I got to read about you and learn about you a little bit.
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Thank you. It seems like you honed in on that right away. Was there a reason for that?
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I had been in Japan previously, working as a singer, and then I was sort of,
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no, I want to be a lawyer. And then for some godforsaken reason, I became a lawyer.
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And like so many people, I went into it because I thought it was a noble profession. Right.
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And, you know, you have the parts of it where it meets your expectations and
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the parts of it that don't.
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I was specialized in labor disputes and intellectual property.
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It didn't necessarily meet that exciting dream I had about helping people.
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Arguably, given that I'd gone into a large corporate commercial law firm.
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I could have worked that out.
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My kind of origin story with human rights is that I was working on this file
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at the time of the independence of South Sudan.
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If you remember, South Sudan seceded from North Sudan. We got two separate countries.
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What struck me at that time was we were advising a consortium of private companies.
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I was pretty naive. I was in my early 20s.
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And this probably won't surprise many people who are more worldly at this time.
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But at that time, I found myself writing these briefs for companies who wanted
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a particular part of land to be allocated to South Sudan in the succession.
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I was writing these briefs about why I think it should go south.
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Essentially, the companies were handing it to the government who was then using
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it in international negotiations or, you know, to be international negotiations between states.
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And I had been taught that there's states that have negotiations together and
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then companies are separate to that.
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And right in front of my eyes, I was being shown very clearly the power of the
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multinational corporation,
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particularly as we've got at developing countries where the multinational corporation
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has just superior resources and lawyers and they're changing what I had learned
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in university was kind of international law negotiations,
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you know, international trade negotiations.
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And so I thought, well, that's interesting.
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We know that there is a system of international law that binds states,
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that binds countries, right?
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And there are, it doesn't always work, but we have a system of courts.
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We have something in place. We have, in many cases, elections,
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which can turn over if we think that they're not doing the right thing.
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Who's watching the companies?
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And this piece of land that was being argued over had nomadic herders there.
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And I was thinking, who's looking out for them? Because I don't think it really
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figured in the company. You know, the companies were not thinking about the rights of those people.
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I started to search in my firm's knowledge database for keywords like human
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rights, private sector companies, and ethics.
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Where is that coming from? And I was also looking around me in the law firm
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and at myself and thinking, there is this weird thing where when people join a company,
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all the ethics they would have in their everyday life seem to abrogate because
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they think someone else is thinking about that.
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It doesn't reflect in what they're doing in the business. They don't think it's
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necessarily their responsibility. Yeah.
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And so I was curious. And at the time I was searching for this,
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this was 2011, it just so happened that at the UN...
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There was this watershed moment where they came up with these principles on
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business and human rights. Is that the pin you wear?
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It's connected in some ways. The pin I wear is the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals. Okay.
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But human rights runs through all of that, for sure. And the role of the private
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sector nowadays is fundamental to achieving those.
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I realized that my firm had written a brief for the special rapporteur who was
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negotiating these guiding principles. and I thought, this is it.
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This is what I've been looking for.
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So I quit my job and applied to do a master's in sustainability science at the
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United Nations University, which happened to be headquartered in Tokyo.
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Get out. I walked there from my house, hand delivered my application, and I got in.
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Wow. This is the universe that does the things.
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Yeah, it did. It really does the things. And you had no idea they were located
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in Tokyo. I'd seen a weird building that I didn't realized was the United Nations University.
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So you go into this program and you get your master's. You must have learned
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so much in this program from pretty amazing people who've been working in this industry, right?
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Was there someone you learned from that you still think about or is a mentor
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that really guided you in what you wanted to do?
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Yeah. So my thesis supervisor, his name's Veselin Popovsky, and he was instrumental
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in advancing this concept that nation states have a responsibility to protect
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even civilians from other states.
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Traditionally, in international law, we think about these get out of my business type things.
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You don't go and interfere in another nation state's domestic affairs.
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He was advancing a threshold where when people are suffering to a sufficient
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degree, above that threshold, you might be able to interfere.
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I like the way he thought about looking at existing systems and saying that needs to be tweaked.
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But I think one of the really influential people for me was at the UN.
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I realized pretty quickly that if I was going to do anything,
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I had to do it myself. I...
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Pushed my way into a forum in Geneva. I said, amazing.
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Did you just show up and you're like, I know they're doing this. I'm going to be here.
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I wrote to them and I said, you know, I'm a representative from the United Nations
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University. I kind of missed the student part by accident.
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And I said, can I come? And my supervisor said, yeah, just go.
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And so, you know, I'd saved up from working as a lawyer. So I was like,
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I'll buy my flight ticket.
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And I show up and I found one of the people who were at this forum,
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which was the first forum after these guiding principles on business and human rights.
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And I said, I'm a student. I have to write a thesis.
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I have time and I have will. And I used to be a lawyer.
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Give me something to do. And she was like, free labor? Yes. Wow.
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And so I kind of glommed on there and I did a
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piece of work on a particular aspect of business and human rights
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that took me to Pepsi in Atlanta and various
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other conferences and ultimately a couple of
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jobs at the UN and was really the
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start of my career no and then that took you to where you're at
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now after I graduated I took a job at
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EY this is when you went back to Japan
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I was always there I just was traveling I was running helping to run the climate
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change and sustainability team at EY Tokyo and I was there for many years and
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working really directly with businesses and banks okay well what does this mean
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for a conservative private sector company.
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What does this mean to actually respect human rights? How do we do this? Yeah, yeah.
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And that was really fun. I wrote a human rights policy with a Japanese bank, which appeals to me.
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Because I came from a conservative law firm, where I get excited,
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you know, in a nerdy way, getting in front of conservative institutions that
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have never thought about this stuff before and being like, human rights.
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Right? You kind of think about this. Yeah. There are regulations in the United
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States that we just have to go through.
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But in other countries, they have different regulations, which might not be
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as stringent as what we have.
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So how does that work from a perspective of, for instance, the Uyghur people?
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I was reading about them and trying to educate myself because she's smart.
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This is where I get smarter.
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I educate myself in how we don't purchase cotton. We do not use Chinese cotton
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because of this issue with human rights and how they're overworking their people.
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So how does it help in other countries and here?
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How do we manage that? You're asking the fundamental question in this field
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because private companies are pretty good at domestic legal compliance.
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They've got legal teams and they follow the laws in their countries.
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What we have now is multinational corporations where an individual corporation's
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annual turnover is higher than the GDP of most countries. Yeah, yeah.
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And we have these long supply chains and value chains that extend overseas.
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Companies are moving their manufacturing base or their call centers around the
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world searching for gaps. We call it the race to the bottom.
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Oh, developing countries will say, we really need foreign direct investment.
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So what we're going to do is lower our minimum wage or not enact a minimum wage.
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We're going to have no environmental laws. Please come and invest in our country.
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You can do whatever you want. And they don't protect their own people's rights.
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And the multinational corporations exploit it.
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It's a very simplistic way of describing what was happening in the 70s and 80s
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and to an extent still in some places today.
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The point of the guiding principles is to say, this is a standard that operates
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whether you are in country X or country Y, you're going to meet this international standard.
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And it's not a high standard. It is a minimum respect for people's rights,
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people's ability to live a life of dignity.
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Do they have food? Do they have access to water?
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Do they have the freedom to pursue their life and livelihoods without discrimination?
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So that minimum threshold of respect for human rights needs to be met regardless
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of where your operations take place.
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One thing that's always really interesting for American companies to learn and
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Australian companies to learn is that we can't always assume that just because
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we're in a wealthy, developed country, that respect for rights in all senses
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is covered off by the domestic laws.
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If you think about the right to form a trade union, okay, not strong in many
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places in the United States.
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If we think about the way in which we understand indigenous rights and territories,
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think about Dakota Access Pipeline and the huge issues and massive financial
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losses that took place there.
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So we really need to be doing what my job is, is helping companies to do human
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rights due diligence. Right.
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Going into all the places they have a business or a location and making sure
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that those people are at that standard level.
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Thinking about their operations and their value chain, whether it's where they're
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procuring their items through their procurement, whether it's downstream with
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their logistics and the use of their products and thinking, okay,
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this is a massive scale of stuff.
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Where are the greatest risks to people in all of that? And let's dig in there.
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Let's see how that can be improved.
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Regardless of where that's happening and regardless of the financial incentives to do so.
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I was sitting with another guest a few weeks ago who started her world in politics
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and we barely touched on what she actually did because we were just so involved
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in her trajectory in that. I'm fascinated by all of these things.
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And we started talking about China and how they have moved a lot of their factories to Africa.
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But are they being regulated? Is it regulated the way that Africa regulates
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or is it China's regulations?
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Right, exactly. So you have this idea of, well, the law has been wrestling with
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this concept of should the law of our country govern the activities of our companies overseas?
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We've been arguing about that for a very long time. The UN Guiding Principles
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cuts through that noise and just says, meet this standard of respect for rights wherever you operate.
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Yeah, that's interesting. You have a very big job.
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What companies have you seen make real changes based on this?
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You know, it's interesting because if you think about those companies that end
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up in the headlines, right?
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Many times those companies end up in the headlines because they've had really
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big challenges and problems that actually make kind of leaps forward in this.
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So I see really interesting stuff from companies like Nestle and Unilever and,
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you know, H&M and others, you know, they have their issues, right? One piece of work that,
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Shift has done, I was involved in that I'm very proud of, is about business
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models. To say, what is it about certain business models that creates greater risk to people?
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That's why you have things like lowest cost to consumer, fast fashion.
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You can have all these wonderful sustainability initiatives.
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But if there's something inherent in the business model that's just going to
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keep creating risk to people, then you're going to have that throughout your
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operations. And that's where you need to make the change.
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It's very hard to turn a big ship. So I also get excited about disruptive startups.
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We know a lot of them, like Tony Cocoloni, right, who looks at the cocoa industry
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and value chain and says, we're going to do this a little bit differently.
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Mars, for example, said, we're not buying cocoa off the commodities market anymore
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because we can't have visibility into whether there's any forced labor or poor
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working conditions if we're just buying off the commodities market.
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So we're going to try and have long-term relationships with our suppliers.
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Maybe we vertically integrate.
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So there's all sorts of different ways that different parts of companies are
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doing this better. But there's a long way to go.
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Does that change working directly with the person who's harvesting it and taking
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it? Doesn't that help those people too?
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Instead of buying it off of the commodities market, right?
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Wouldn't it help that relationship with the farmers that are actually doing
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it? Because the farmers know that they're going to be selling Mars,
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all of this cacao, and they know that's going to them.
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Exactly right. That long-term stability of a purchasing relationship,
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because you often see it with companies, they'll say to their suppliers,
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we want you to be green and sustainable, and we're going to audit you every
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X number of years or months.
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And that costs money for a supplier to improve. They've got to pay people more, give maternity leave.
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If they're not guaranteed some level of stability of purchasing...
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You know, then you're just a large multinational pushing the problem and the
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burden up the supply chain. And that's not what we want.
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So at Shift, is this what you're focused on now?
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I know you work with other companies. You're not just doing UN stuff.
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You're working with Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits.
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Is that your main goal, just to make sure that that's what everyone's doing,
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to get out there, your reach as far as you can?
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Yes. So our goal is a world in which business gets done with respect for people's
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dignity. Their fundamental dignity.
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And you would think that that would just be a normal thing to think about.
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It should just be something that we all do.
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What advice would you give to companies or small businesses even that they could
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be doing to kind of get themselves going in the right direction with human rights
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and making sure their people are getting what they need as well?
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I would advise them to sit down and think about what does our footprint look like?
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We call it a value chain, right? Like where you're getting your goods upstream
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in your procurement and what you're selling and where it's going.
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Do you have an understanding beyond your first tier suppliers?
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Where are they getting their stuff from? And sometimes it gets really hard.
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But you can sort of vaguely map that out and try to understand that.
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And then take a look at what that picture looks like and say,
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okay, within that picture, where might we have the greatest risk to people?
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It might be because you have a connection to a certain geography where there's
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higher risk. It might be because you're in a particular sector where we know
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there are risks related to minerals, conflict minerals and things like that.
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It might be because of a particular business model that you have, but where are the risks?
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And then you stop and you think, well, how are we connected to that?
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Is this a case of actually the way that we're buying is causing these problems
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or contributing to them?
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During the pandemic, it was incredible because what we learned in the pandemic
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was there were these business models that companies had where it was called
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a just-in-time inventory model where they would essentially leave the burden
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of surplus goods with the supplier.
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So they would order it and the supplier would assiduously make all the stuff
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and they would say, yeah, but we're not taking delivery until the nth hour.
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And if there's a problem and demand drops, the financial burden stays with you, supplier.
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And this was exposed in the
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middle of the pandemic because so many orders were canceled
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demand dropped and suppliers were left right
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and the rights of workers in essential industries you
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know all of this was exposed and so that you know i would say understand your
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relationship to the problem maybe it's nothing that you have caused or contributed
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to it's just in your value chain because you happen to be procuring this item
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and it's associated with forced labor whether you know the example you gave earlier or otherwise.
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And then what can you do about it? How can you change it? I feel like we could
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just use this in life as well.
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Right. It's not complex. How am I contributing to this problem?
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How can I stop doing that, make this better? This is something we should just teach our kids. Right.
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How are you contributing to this problem? And even if you're not part of the
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problem, if you're connected in the way that you do business is reliant upon
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this value chain, you're a member of this value chain, then you have a responsibility
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to at least try to influence others to do better. Yeah.
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We need to put this like on a billboard. More people need to understand this. Okay.
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We're going to take a full 180 right now, guys. So you mentioned that you sang
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in Japan. You were a singer in Japan.
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I was. Please elaborate on that. Tell us more.
25:16
So I was at university in Japan and I answered an ad in a magazine looking for a singer.
25:24
I guess it was an English language newspaper. I just assumed that the band would
25:28
be looking for someone to sing in English.
25:31
I'd studied japanese since i was 11 but you're not fluent until
25:35
you've really lived there a while and i'd only been there at that point
25:37
like six months i met with the band and they
25:40
said yeah okay you seem good we were speaking in a mixture of english and japanese
25:44
and they said go away and learn these three songs and come back i got the songs
25:48
and they were in japanese the lyrics to these songs were written by a guy we
25:55
call it hikomori in japanese which is like a recluse you know,
25:59
someone that doesn't really come out of their home. I met him one time.
26:03
He wrote this poetry, this incredible, I don't even know what to compare it
26:12
to, like Shakespearean kind of lyrics. It was unbelievable.
26:15
Not only was it purely Japanese, it was poetic Japanese, let's just say,
26:20
and imagery that was very foreign to me, you know, about very traditional Japanese,
26:27
customs in festivals and things like that. It was a bit folky.
26:30
My guitarist who had me audition, you know, so he is a brilliant guitarist and
26:35
he's like a session musician.
26:37
When Cliff Richard came to Japan, he'd be in the band. He used to say.
26:41
He wanted to make music. He wrote the music. He said, Ashley,
26:44
this is Japanese rock music. And I said, this is folk music.
26:49
He was like, no, this is what Japanese rock music would have evolved to in the
26:54
absence of influence from the West.
26:56
So if we never had the Beatles and we never had the Stones, Japanese traditional
27:01
music would have evolved into what I'm writing.
27:05
And that would have been our rock kind of thing.
27:08
I said, well, if you say so. but it was amazing the
27:11
music is phenomenal I had the lyrics translated by a friend who
27:14
did a beautiful job with it I memorized the lyrics
27:18
and sang it almost phonetically my first show was a trade show and in this particular
27:25
tongue twister song I got stuck in the middle of it but I pushed on how long
27:29
did you do that for years we had a cd we did a little tour stop it my dad bought most to the copies.
27:36
Where is the CD? We need it. I need it. I need to hear it.
27:40
It was sold in Tower Records at one point for five minutes.
27:43
My friends went in and bought the five copies. Once the five were gone,
27:47
my friends would go in to Tower Records in Shibuya and make this big show of
27:52
being like, where is the CD?
27:55
I've traveled from Kyushu to buy it.
27:58
It didn't work. I don't think they restocked a whole lot of them.
28:02
That is amazing. It was an experience I think not a lot of people have in terms
28:06
of like I'm in dive bars, I'm in places.
28:09
Sometimes we played before a few, you know, a lot of people.
28:12
Sometimes I played for two people.
28:13
I'm sitting in green rooms with Japanese guys reminiscing about the 70s and 60s.
28:19
And yeah, it was an interesting experience. No kidding.
28:24
So then you moved, you eventually moved to Connecticut. Yeah.
28:28
And then you were like, I want to sing again. I want to start a band. So how did that happen.
28:36
Yeah, I didn't realize how much it affected me having music missing from my life.
28:42
And through a friend, I got invited to come in.
28:45
Well, it stemmed from the fact that during the pandemic, I think you know this,
28:49
during the pandemic, my friends and I, to keep ourselves sane,
28:52
were singing karaoke in backyards,
28:55
six feet apart with one of those little microphone condom things and just singing
29:01
karaoke in the backyards of Western. I'm sorry for the people that heard us.
29:05
And we got chatting and then he eventually brought me in to sing with this band, Teacup Sally.
29:10
And I kind of went from there. And how many gigs have you played now with Teacup Sally? Oh, gosh.
29:16
I don't know. Yeah. I mean, not a crazy amount, but we've played a good few.
29:21
We've played Akilah's Nest, The Spotted Horse in Shelton, The Western Memorial
29:25
Day Fair. That's a big one. That's a big one. Private parties.
29:29
Yeah. What's the strangest place you've played?
29:32
With Teacup Sally? Yeah. The living room of my friend Veronica on her birthday.
29:40
The whole band. Yeah, the whole band. No, actually, no, scratch that.
29:44
One time for Veena, who you had on the show last week. Yeah.
29:48
We moved in. It was her birthday. We moved all of the equipment in and we just blasted.
29:52
And it was like five of my girlfriends kind of dancing and this six-piece band
29:56
in her living room. That's probably the weirdest place.
30:00
That had to have vibrated everything. Right.
30:03
Again, apologies to the people of us. If you could collaborate with any musician,
30:07
past or present, who would you collaborate with?
30:10
Just recently, for the first time ever, I wrote a song. Oh, wow.
30:16
And I think I would collaborate.
30:19
And this is a huge step for me. I think that I'd have a brilliant singer,
30:25
maybe someone with kind of classical training, like a different skill set to me. I'm a rock singer.
30:31
I wanted to write a rock song and I wrote this kind of sweet ballad-like song.
30:36
I might collaborate with a brilliant singer who would sing that song.
30:42
Somebody that had that classical training that had played in Les Mis,
30:46
you know what I mean? That had that beautiful high register.
30:50
I just have this, I've always thought of myself as not super creative person.
30:55
And I think that's held me back because I've always thought,
30:57
well, I'm not that creative.
30:58
I can take something and make it good or be a good little soldier within the
31:02
limits, within the box that's predefined.
31:04
To create something, particularly a song, you're pulling something out of the
31:07
air and you're setting that down and that will outlive you.
31:13
My favorite thing that I've ever done was with a local musician, actually.
31:16
We were introduced at a party and he helped me to put the song together, David, based in Weston.
31:22
It was phenomenal and helped me to really bring it to life.
31:25
It was this experience that changed me in a sense because I didn't think that,
31:31
well, I have to get that external validation at the end of it.
31:35
I have to write it, then perform it, and have people clap.
31:38
I don't care if I perform it or if people clap. The process of writing it and
31:43
having birthed that song gives me so much joy.
31:46
And it's just one song. I realized how much that meant to me.
31:50
You've got more in you. I'm waiting for the next. It came to me in a dream.
31:54
Those are the best. And so I'm waiting for that to come by again,
31:57
and I'm going to grab it out of the ether.
31:59
When I was designing or even when I work with a client, I will dream it.
32:07
Wow. Yeah. I'll know what I need. Someone will be like, Maria,
32:10
I'm going to a wedding, and I need blah, blah, blah. I'm like,
32:13
okay. I know what it is. It's not there.
32:15
I don't know where it exists, but I know it's there.
32:18
So they're like, can we look? I'm like, no, let me do my process and I'll get
32:22
it. And all of a sudden, right before I wake up, I'll see it.
32:25
So you're a genuinely creative person, because in my fascination with this,
32:29
I read this book by Rick Rubin, who's a famous music producer.
32:32
And he wrote this book on creativity, and he said exactly that.
32:36
He said, the ideas and the original concepts, whether it's a song or a look, it's there.
32:44
It's a question of shutting out all of the external distractions and being able
32:50
to grab it when it floats by. And then once I read that, I started noticing
32:54
other people talking like that, right?
32:56
Like you'll hear famous singers and other artists who'll say,
33:00
you know, you listen to an interview with Adele and she's like,
33:03
I don't know where this comes from.
33:04
I just am grateful and I bring it. I'm just a medium.
33:08
And when you say you let it come to you and you just have the patience and the
33:13
grace, but also the tenacity to grab it, I think that that must be the answer somehow.
33:19
And we got to all quieten down and listen. I find that we don't.
33:22
I like to sit quietly now and I never liked to because I just couldn't.
33:26
I had a hard time shutting it off. Yeah.
33:30
Now it's really nice. And you get your ideas when you're still. No, not all the time.
33:34
It's just I know the feelings there. I get my ideas. Sometimes I'm hiking the dog.
33:39
Sometimes when I'm in the middle of cooking dinner.
33:43
I think that maybe it also has a little bit of I might have ADD.
33:46
So there it's just it floats in. But I always write it down.
33:50
Like I write it down. I have to grab it. I'll do something to make sure that
33:55
I don't forget it because I will literally it'll be gone if I don't do something with it.
34:00
So it's that ability to listen and to pull it out, right? To have that purpose.
34:04
I'm going to be listening for something. I'm going to pull it out.
34:06
And then I think it's about audacity a little bit, right?
34:09
Because there's a million reasons not to create something new.
34:12
People like the status quo. The status quo is comfortable.
34:14
I just started like every other 40-year-old woman in the world.
34:17
I just read All Four's by Miranda July. Now I'm down in Miranda July rabbit
34:20
hole. I have that book in my cart.
34:23
Veena made me read it. I read whatever Veena tells me to read it.
34:25
Yes, yes. She was dead, right? It's incredible.
34:27
Hard to get into, I've got to say. But I think about the way that she is with
34:31
what she creates and her originality and this audacity to it.
34:35
Like people are going to say, that's weird. That's different. Don't do that.
34:39
Stick with it. There must be something about this rigidness of being a lawyer.
34:43
You have rules. You have laws.
34:45
You have structure. You have to write this. You have to do this brief.
34:47
But the other side is this need to let that go.
34:51
To have an outlet to create, to breathe. Right.
34:54
Like I get it. There has to be a balance, right?
34:57
I think that's, yes, absolutely. And I forgot that for a while in my life and
35:04
have brought that back recently and it's giving me a great deal of joy. Oh, I'm so glad.
35:09
I want more music. If we were to peek into your Spotify playlist...
35:13
Oh, it's very eclectic. Who are some people? I love this. Who are some people
35:16
that you're listening to right now? Oh, my goodness.
35:20
Well, you will find a song called The Duck Song. That's my daughter's favorite song.
35:26
Amazing. Amazing. I recommend it to everybody. She's a little singer, too.
35:30
She absolutely loves it. What my husband and I have managed to do in breeding
35:34
this child is the audacity that I never had.
35:39
She's got the musical aptitude, but she's also got a fearlessness.
35:43
And an audacity that I personally am kind of jealous of. I think it's amazing.
35:47
Oh, I love that. The duck song.
35:49
So recently I've been a little homesick and I have been listening to Australian music. Okay.
35:57
Of a certain era. So there are bands from Australia, like the Whitlam's Powderfinger, Little Birdie.
36:04
There's a band actually that came to, that traveled through.
36:08
I went and saw them in New York with this by myself, dragged my husband to see them.
36:12
And when I was there I looked around and
36:15
it was sort of all other Aussie women of the same sort of
36:18
age so I'm in this kick of just rediscovering
36:23
the music and of my own country which I think when you're when you're somebody
36:28
who's sort of like I've got to get to the center of things I've got to get out
36:31
into the world and everything's better than where you're from right I love now
36:34
being at a point where I'm looking back and kind of saying actually we do some
36:38
stuff pretty well And I do.
36:40
There's something about Australian music that is a little different and that
36:43
has something unique to say. And I've enjoyed it.
36:45
Oh, I love that. You also created my boyfriend, Chris Hemsworth.
36:49
Yes. You're welcome. There's a joke in my family that if he's on TV, I will be watching it.
36:55
And I think my husband has a crush on him, too, because he's a surfer.
36:58
So the whole family is just pretty enamored with that beast of a man.
37:04
I wish that, you know, because we're such a small country, often you can find
37:07
a degree of separation. wouldn't that be great?
37:09
Keith Ledger's stepdad taught me to drive, but I don't have,
37:13
his sister went to my school, but I don't have that for Chris Hesor.
37:15
I have no connection though.
37:16
My connection is just watching Marvel movies and staring at him.
37:20
He's just such a handsome human.
37:22
So you're juggling the working mom, the musician.
37:29
There's no balance in life, right? I don't believe that there's any sort of balance in what we do.
37:33
I really don't. Something gets missed when you're Right. You sign gives every
37:37
now and again. Every now and again.
37:38
Yeah. This whole lean in was bullshit. There's no leaning into anything.
37:41
What do you do for yourself or for your family to try to keep that homeostasis
37:46
with this very demanding job that you have and creating this really fun music
37:51
that you enjoy and gives you other fulfillment?
37:54
And I think one of the major secrets that I have is that I have a very equal
37:58
partnership in my home with my husband.
38:00
He has a very demanding job, but there's never an assumption that the domestic
38:05
sphere is my role. We work out who's doing what.
38:08
And probably more often than not, he's taken more than 50%. I think that is
38:13
just key. It does mean, though, in a funny way, sometimes we'll both sign the
38:17
kids up for something or we'll both pay for the T-shirt.
38:20
The kid gets two T-shirts, so the teacher will email and say,
38:23
your husband's already responded to this. Sometimes I think it would be easier
38:26
if we had clearer delineation.
38:29
But it's getting done twice. That's amazing. So that helps. We signed up to the au pair program.
38:35
Oh, yeah. Having good child care makes all the difference. When I was in Japan,
38:41
my son had a nanny who taught me so much of what I know about child care because
38:45
I didn't have family there.
38:46
And she worked for us full time and it was phenomenal.
38:50
I couldn't have done the things that I did without her. Now we have a wonderful au pair.
38:55
I couldn't do what I do without her. So I think it's the people around you.
39:00
I lean on my friends. I've had to learn to ask for help.
39:02
I was at the UN. My husband was on a business trip at the same time.
39:06
We don't have the availability to lean on my parents. You know,
39:09
my husband's mother's a little older, you know, and so I had to just ask our
39:15
friends and be okay with that and understand that I would reciprocate.
39:20
People like to help. They do. People enjoy. It builds a closeness.
39:24
It builds a community. In the very rare occasions where something like that
39:27
will happen, where we both have a business trip, I will ask for help.
39:30
That's something that took me a while to understand as well.
39:34
But then you create these friendships that become your family.
39:38
Yeah. Because my parents are in California. Ben's parents are in Florida.
39:41
We moved here. I didn't know anyone. And you've created such a incredible network of women.
39:45
We've built it. And anyone would drop anything to be like, I got you, in a heartbeat.
39:50
Yeah. It's pretty special. I think Westin itself is very special in regards
39:55
to that. Because there are groups.
39:57
Everyone's made these friendships. And I think all of those different friendships
40:00
and different subcategories have it. Yeah. Because of this place.
40:04
I love that. I have found that. I came knowing nobody. Yeah.
40:08
And I've had things happen since I've been here where I've had to lean on people
40:12
and humble myself and really say I need help. And...
40:16
People have really shown up. Yeah, they really do. It's pretty amazing.
40:19
With regards to husbands being helpful, I agree with you. There has to be that
40:23
ability for them to take on responsibilities as well.
40:27
I find that I have a hard time.
40:31
Ben does a lot. I mean, he's driving these kids everywhere. He does all of that
40:34
driving for snowboarding. By the end of this month, he will not want to drive anywhere.
40:39
He is done, tapped out. He does so much.
40:42
Sometimes I get frustrated because he starts to do too much.
40:45
Then he gets really busy and what he's been doing stops.
40:49
Then I have to rally back up to do it. And I'm almost like, just don't ever
40:52
do those things. You're setting the bar too high. No, literally.
40:55
Just don't do those things. Because then when you're not able to do those things,
40:59
I've gotten used to not doing them.
41:00
It's a weird feeling. I've gotten used to not doing those things.
41:04
So just don't do that thing. Then I'm always doing it.
41:07
So when you are in the city and you're in a grind, I won't forget and then feel bad.
41:13
Yeah. That I have not, you know, done the things you've been doing.
41:17
But we're so lucky that we have that because I'm hoping more people have that,
41:21
that we have, that there is that give and take in the relationship,
41:25
that they're taking on things that aren't just like, quote unquote,
41:29
her job or whatever it might be.
41:31
Yeah. Both of us seek help.
41:34
A lot of our fulfillment and excitement in various things, right?
41:39
We don't begrudge each other kind of pursuing those passions.
41:43
Because if I couldn't go and rehearse with my band on a Thursday night and come
41:46
home at one in the morning, I know now that I would be less happy.
41:49
And it does, it fills my cup and I'm a better person for it.
41:53
I used to go and stay one night a month with an Australian girlfriend in the city.
41:59
We would go to a vegetarian dinner, chat, watch trashy TV.
42:03
I would sleep in, do some yoga, and then come home the next morning.
42:07
But doing that once a month also is something that filled my cup.
42:11
And, you know, my husband's like, I get that. Totally get that. It was never an issue.
42:14
We do wives weekends where we get away together. We leave all the hearts that
42:20
beat that need us. We're like, bye.
42:23
They're good. We take off. It is self-care. And everyone's got a different version
42:29
of it. But I really believe that that's self-care.
42:32
Yeah. And I think as well, you want to make sure everybody can.
42:36
You don't want to situate all of the ability in one person. Yeah.
42:39
My husband says that one of the most instrumental things in him stepping up
42:43
as a parent and bonding with our son was when I had to go to the UN when I was still breastfeeding.
42:48
My son was three or four months old and I had this opportunity and I would have
42:52
been crazy not to take it.
42:54
I had to find the breast pumping room in the bowels of the UN. Yeah.
42:58
Trying to find this room. I was out pumping at crazy hours in this little room,
43:01
but I don't regret at all doing that.
43:04
He describes it as he had to sink or swim at that early age.
43:07
It works. Okay, so at the end, I always ask three questions.
43:10
The first question is, is there something you have changed your mind about recently?
43:14
The value of a process...
43:18
Writing the song. And I just assumed that I would feel that beautiful glow when
43:26
I had written it, and then I was performing it, and everybody clapped.
43:30
And I realized that glow came in the process. And that was really,
43:34
I grew a little bit from that, I feel like.
43:36
So I changed my mind on where the joy comes from a little bit.
43:39
Is there anything fun or interesting on your bucket list?
43:44
Happily I've done a lot of things that have been on my bucket list but
43:48
yeah I think that on my
43:51
bucket list would be to create not
43:56
like write a memoir I've watched Veena through that process and the skill tenacity
44:03
patience I don't know that I have that but what I would love to do is great
44:08
for my kids or maybe their kids, anybody who cares.
44:12
It doesn't have to be published. Just a little series of vignettes of little
44:16
things that have happened in my life, like little snapshots,
44:19
like sitting in a green room with the Japanese musicians or photocopying documents
44:24
for North Korean diplomat and how that felt to me, or thinking that I'd lost
44:28
my dad at one point. I hadn't, but a funny story.
44:31
Just little vignettes. I think I could create this little.
44:35
Overview picture of these little things that have happened in life that maybe
44:40
are a little bit unusual.
44:41
I love it. I gotta do it. But I really love that because we don't have,
44:44
I don't know if your mom did this, but we had all of the pictures in photo albums.
44:52
Years. Like my dad's high school pictures when he was a baby,
44:57
they're all in these photo albums.
44:59
Something tangible. Something tangible that you can look at.
45:01
And when we were kids, we'd flip through all of them. Yeah.
45:04
And And it was like, oh, my God, what was she wearing? Oh, my God, look at this.
45:08
And my friend Danny, her mom, Cheryl, hi, Cheryl, had books upon books of photographs.
45:16
And it was like when Cheryl and her husband, Ted, when they were at Syracuse
45:20
together and he played football and she actually was a football referee.
45:24
Oh, cool. She's so badass.
45:26
Yeah. But there are pictures of that from college. And when we were kids,
45:29
it's not, when we were kids, we would pull these books out from the office.
45:34
And we would just flip through them to see the history.
45:37
And I don't have any of that. Right. I have freaking Instagram.
45:41
There's an app now. You can have that print. My list is to get those little
45:44
checkbooks made. Yes. Yes.
45:45
Yeah. Why not? I want the kids like that. Yeah, for sure.
45:48
And we have all of this digital memory now without having physical books.
45:55
And there's something so nice about being tangible and holding on to it.
45:58
That's why a yearbook is so fun.
45:59
It keeps your focus in that one thing, right? that, you know,
46:02
I'd love my kid to look through my photographs, but then they're on my phone
46:05
or on a tablet and then they're being targeted. It's a minefield.
46:08
Give somebody a book, they sit still, you're proximate, maybe you're touching,
46:11
maybe you're breathing, you're drinking a little cup of tea.
46:14
It's a different experience.
46:15
The last question is, is there one piece of advice that you would give to your younger self? Yeah.
46:24
So there's advice I would give to younger people generally, and then there's
46:28
advice I would give to like little Ashley. Let's do both.
46:32
So the advice I would give to little Ashley would be,
46:36
Don't be afraid to be a little less conventional. Don't always wait for permission.
46:45
There's always a million reasons that people can give you for maintaining the status quo.
46:51
And if you're looking for an excuse not to, then you will find it immediately.
46:56
What I've learned in the last five years of my life has been that people are
47:02
okay with unconventionality if it's predictable.
47:04
People what people like more than
47:07
conventionality is predictability so
47:11
if you brand yourself or you live
47:14
your life authentically and it's sort of well that's
47:17
yeah she does that right that's the Aussie that's the
47:20
crazy Aussie girl she's gonna shave half her head the path
47:23
is smoother and the path is easier so I would tell little
47:26
Ashley don't wait for permission ask for forgiveness
47:29
if you need it yeah what would you tell all the young
47:32
people i would say don't make
47:36
your appearance the most interesting thing about you yeah
47:39
that could be interesting and that's fantastic cultivate
47:44
more we'll need it you will need it
47:47
yeah oh god that was good this has been fantastic thank you oh thank you so
47:52
much we literally went from global human rights to writing a song and an album
47:57
that's next well we'll see but i like the fact that i've put it out there now
48:02
now i gotta do it oh this is brilliant.
48:12
Thank you so much for joining me today on she's smart new episodes drop every
48:16
thursday don't forget to subscribe and share stay cozy.