Team

Ashley is a super connector who enjoys getting people in the best possible positions to succeed. She is ingenious at finding connections between disparate ideas and executing on those ideas. She spends her day doing branding and web design and nurturing startup founders on Startup Row. She was inspired to start Girlmade after she realized that it is not in the narrative for girls to run their own startups. Y Combinator, one of the world’s most successful accelerator programs only accepts 4% women on average.

She also enjoys learning how to build sustainable communities, raise chickens, and promote the maker movement. Ashley is a graduate of Columbia University in the City of New York. As one of the organizers of Maker Faire Reno and Startup Weekend Reno, Ashley is emphatic that ” we do more than we talk”. She lives with her family in the Reno. She is now working on a startup in the music industry.

At Girlmade Bela is a community manager while a student in the STEM program at Galena High School. At the age of 9 Bela founded the first-ever Washoe County elementary debate club. She graduated from the GT SWAS program after having attending since the 2nd grade. Bela is currently in the process of publishing her first novel. In her spare time she enjoys running cross country and playing lacrosse for Galena High School.

She can be reached at [email protected]

Alex Ellison brings years of curriculum development and leadership under her belt. She will be developing the next generation of entrepreneurial women. At Girlmade she wears many hats, but her main focus is on recruiting, managing and developing interns. She teaches students to be calculated risk-takers who are willing to take the road less travelled. As a college planner she requires her high school students to brand themselves and to start a blog.

Alex is a graduate of Northwestern University and is currently pursuing her Masters at the University of Nevada, Reno. Alex runs a college planning company called Dunce, LLC. They both work in downtown Reno on Startup Row. She lives with her rad husband who is a copy-writer for startups and small businesses, and her baby girl, Rory. They are living the startup life.