The Global Leadership Interview: Ashley Bernhard, this year’s recipient of the “Citizen of the World Award” presented by the Hospitality Committee for United Nations Delegations
Interviewed by Halle Sherwin, an independent digital marketing and media consultant. Halle is an integral member of The Gardner Carney Leadership Institute’s marketing team.
Ashley Bernhard is the Founder and CEO of Haven Hill, dedicated to developing and creating programs and events focusing on equality, leadership and empowerment. She specializes in working with both women and men to promote gender equality, inspiring the next generation of leaders.
Bernhard is the recipient of the 2019 Citizen of the World Award from the Hospitality Committee for United Nations Delegations. The Citizen of the World Award is presented to an individual who has made an extraordinary commitment to equality, peace, justice and/or human rights. Past recipients include: Nelson R. Mandela (Freedom Award), Walter Cronkite (Citizen of the World Award), Jacques Yves Cousteau (Humanitarian Award), Mrs. Nelson A. Rockefeller (Citizen of the World Award), and R.E. (Ted) Turner (Citizen of the World Award). Bernhard’s philosophy of equality, leadership, and empowerment is simple: treat people, no matter their station in life, the way you want to be treated, and you can effect change.
Halle Sherwin: Ashley, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us to share your passion and the work you’re done to create equality, leadership, and empowerment. Was there a moment that changed you, a moment when you realized this was something you had to do?
Ashley Bernhard: There is a definite, absolute moment in time. January of 2013, I was taking our son Alex, who was 11 years old, to the finals of the J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions, one of the world series events of professional squash. It’s hosted in New York City in Grand Central Station. A glass squash court is put up and the top players come from all over the world. Alex and I were going to watch the women’s finals. There was a huge poster for the event with the draw and the prize money for the men and the women.
They also had a large thermometer, with the red line showing the prize money for the women at $25,000 and for the men it was $115,000. You can see what the optics looked like, these two thermometers side by side. Alex said to me, “Mom, why do the women get paid so much less than the men?” I’m looking at him, and before I could even figure out how to explain this to an 11-year-old boy, he said, “Mom, can’t you do something about it?”
That is how I got launched on this amazing journey and career. I waited until the tournament was over and called my friend and colleague who owns the tournament, and I said, “The optics alone aren’t very good. And, you know, it’s not good for you, it’s not good for J.P. Morgan, the title sponsor.” It’s just not right to have such a big discrepancy in the prize money. It was sort of the same old story, you still hear today,”Well, nobody comes to watch the women.” That’s why sponsors and partners don’t put money into the draw. I said, “Why don’t we look at the draw and see if there’s a way that we could create an event around the women?” We did and suggested we create an award for women’s leadership. Our mission statement for that award is very simple and it’s a guiding light for everything that I do that’s sports related. The J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions, Women’s Leadership Program supports female athletes, women who lead, and equality. The women we honor inspire us with their accomplishments on and off the court. By year three, we had equal prize money and equal draw sizes and anywhere from a third to half of our attendees are men, which is really great.
HS: What’s so funny to me, Ashley, is when we got on the phone the first thing you said to me was, Halle, you know, I’m not a risk taker or a gambler.
AB: It’s true!
HS: No, it’s not true! Your 11-year-old son said, mom, can’t you do something about this? You picked up a phone, you made a call, and you changed everything; that’s being a risk taker and a gambler!
AB: I was trying to bring my passion and my expertise to tell people, “It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also the smart thing to do.” And sure enough, because the US Open had already offered equal prize money the year before, The Tournament of Champions was the next in line. They went like dominoes after that and now we have equal prize money at all of the top squash events as of August 1st of 2018.
HS: Your son has clearly been raised with some kind of awareness, some kind of ability to see disparity or discrepancy, as well as character, too. Everything he shared embodies who you are, and mirrors your company’s mission statement: Equality, Leadership, Empowerment. What were you teaching your son and his two sisters because we should all be teaching our children to have this awareness! What were you talking about around the dinner table?
AB: I was just raising my kids, to be honest with you; I was keeping my head above water with three kids, a busy life, and husband. My husband and I taught our children, like our parents taught us, to treat people the way you want to be treated. Treat people equally no matter their station in life. It’s the golden rule. It’s so simple. It might sound like a cliché, but really at the end of the day, if you just treat other people the way you would want to be treated, you’re halfway there in life, more than halfway there in life! It’s what I’ve always told the kids; they still talk about it today as adults.
HS: Flash forward from that defining moment to now: you’ve received the 2019 Citizen of the World Award from the Hospitality Committee for United Nations Delegations, presented to an individual who has made an extraordinary commitment to equality, peace, justice, and/or human rights.” That is absolutely remarkable. That’s a huge leap in a short period of time. How did you feel when you found out?
AB: Well, I was completely shocked. I’m so humbled by being honored in this way because I love what I do. I just put one foot in front of the other each day, with each project, and I throw my passion into whatever I’m doing. It was a surprise to be recognized in this way. To be honest with you, I don’t think of myself as being a big deal in any way. I’m just doing what I think is right and what I’m interested in.
HS: It seems to me that that professionally your passion for equality, leadership, and empowerment started with squash, correct?
AB: I ended up launching my career, involved in the professional squash world, before I started Haven Hill. At the time, there were two separate governing bodies for the sport. There was The Professional Squash Association for the Men’s Division and the Women’s Squash Association. I was asked to go on the women’s association and I quickly realized we needed to merge with the men. We did end up merging with the men’s division and created one global governing body for both men and women, The Professional Squash Association. That was the beginning of seeing, and really treating, men and women equally, from a governance point of view. I was the one person from the women’s association to go over to the newly merged governing body and became the Deputy Chair of the PSA, with the added responsibility of looking out for the women, making sure that this was truly a merger and not a takeover. That’s where I really started to dig into issues around equality, leadership, and empowerment.
HS: What were some of the issues you discovered around leadership?
AB: When people who are in leadership and decision-making roles invest in women, the rising tide lifts all boats. That realization really flipped the switch for me. And I’ll tell you why that was such a game changer for me. It’s actually a lot of work to merge two professional tours together. Once it was done, I was there to push for the women. Eighteen months after the merger, the social media impressions for both the men and the women went up over 250%, the prize money for both men and women went up over 30%, and the revenue for the Professional Squash Association went up 68%. You can’t hide from the data, right? The data is saying, we merged with the women, we are investing in the women. It’s a really great example of the concept that “it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do” because you see, as I said, the rising tide lifted all boats. The men’s and women’s tours are doing better and the PSA revenue is skyrocketing. From that experience, I thought, well, if we can do this for professional squash, why can’t we do this in other areas, businesses, governments? It didn’t seem like rocket science to me. What happens when you hire, promote, and retain women? The answer is always that everything goes up: your revenue, customer satisfaction, employee retention, creativity. I started thinking, well, this is just insane. Why aren’t people creating more gender diverse companies or divisions or committees or boards? It just seems like a no brainer to me. How do you ignore it? How would you ignore it? I started thinking, well it must be some educational blip, right? Because if you are in the business of making money, then you would want to know this data and you would want to change up your business model, right?
HS: That’s an amazing accomplishment to pull off so quickly and successfully. Is this the point when you founded Haven Hill?
AB: Yes, though prior to founding Haven Hill, I had heard of this amazing man Yann Borgstedt, Founder and CEO of The Womanity Foundation. He said, “I’m an entrepreneur. If my investors came to me and looked at my business plan and saw that I was not using half of my assets, they would pull their money out and run like their hair was on fire.” And basically, that is what we’re doing around the world in all different pockets, from western civilization to big, fancy corporations, to rural areas in third world countries. If you’re not harnessing the potential of women, you are not using half of your assets. Hearing him speak blew me away.
And so underneath Haven Hill, I created The Symposium on Equality; What Happens When Businesses Invest in Women. Yann was my Keynote Speaker. The symposium was successful because of Yann and the speakers who participated: Alli McCartney, Managing Director UBS; Robert Reiss, CEO of The CEO Forum Group; Dr. Jeanne Zaino of Applied Techonomics; Angela Lee, Columbia Business School; Patrick Steel, CEO of POLITICO.
This is what I now do; I work with other people and companies to help them see through a lens, without emotion or attachment, to understand that by doing the right thing, you can also make money for your company, you can be a better company. It’s so endless: just investing in girls, in education, affects all different kinds of things!
HS: Tell me how you became involved with Maria Toorpakai Wazir, the young woman who wrote the book “A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight.”
AB: Her story is amazing. Here’s the short version. Maria grew up in South Waziristan, Pakistan, which is controlled by the Taliban. When she was growing up, girls were not allowed out of the house, let alone allowed to play sports. When she was four years old, her parents came home and found that she had burned all of her clothing and had cut off her hair because she would see the boys playing sports, out beyond a barrier wall around her home, and she wanted to play sports, too. To her father’s credit, not only did he condone this, but he agreed to help his daughter disguise herself as a boy so that she could play sports.
Fast forward: The CEO of the Professional Squash Association called me and said, Maria has a book coming out. Can you help her, perhaps on a publicity level? I said, sure, though I’m not a book publicist, but because of squash, let me see how I can help. She is just a very special and unique human being as well as a top squash player and I wanted to help her any way I could. I coordinated a program for the United Nations Women’s International Forum where Maria lead a discussion.
She was a special guest at the Samsung X Haven Hill Summit Series. I was then able to facilitate an interview for her with the BBC. I was trying to help her amplify her story anyway I could. Getting her exposure in the US, especially with the UN, led to a chain of events for Maria which propelled her and her story to another level. I suggested her for the Wilma Rudolph Courage Award at the Women’s Sports Foundation, founded by Billie Jean King, Maria received the award.
HS: What an inspiration! Speaking of which, I’d love to hear more about Brave Girl Rising.
AB: “Brave Girl Rising” is a documentary short about girls in refugee camps and was released in February. It’s produced by Girl Rising, the non-profit behind the global campaign for girls’ education and empowerment. I am strategic advisor on their newest documentary short “Strong Girl Rising” about girls and sports. We’re currently in the fundraising stage and the film is scheduled to be released next year. The Ambassador from Monaco to the UN and I were discussing potential program ideas for The International Day of the Girl. Because of my work with Girl Rising, I shared that Brave Girl rising is an amazing film. It’s a fifteen minute documentary we can show and put a panel discussion around the film. That’s what we did; it hit capacity in two days, with 400 people, and a waiting list of 100.
HS: Ashley, the work you’ve done has made such an impact across the globe, not only for girls and women in sports, but for women and men in the corporate world. Currently, what programs are you creating or developing to keep this momentum going?
AB: It’s one thing to talk about getting more women in the pipeline or on your board in senior management. It’s another thing to actually make it happen. I am just starting on a project about gender diversity in finance. The finance executive leading this project is one of the few men I’ve met who truly understands the issue on the macro, micro, and emotional level. We’ll be working with women and men in finance, creating a program focusing on solutions, training programs, workshops and forums that will activate change because there’s no point in whining and complaining about the lack of women in finance; that’s not helpful. What will be helpful is to be able to say to a company, here’s how we can help you change. We’ll do that through research and the program we’re creating.
HS: You’re pursuing so many interesting initiatives. What drives you, Ashley?
AB: What’s driving me is asking myself, what can we do now to make the world a better place? Meaning, if you start blaming people for something that happened in the past and bringing all that baggage with you, you are not going to get anywhere. What I found that really worked is to take the emotion of out of the issue. For example, in squash, we moved so quickly to create equal prize money; it was lightning speed compared to other sports or industries and I really do think that, at the end of the day, we weren’t looking backwards. You do have to understand the historical perspective because it is part of the story. We were looking at what was happening right now in our sport and what’s going to be happening in one year, five years. We weren’t trying to blame men; in fact, I was trying to have men be part of the solution. People feel like they’re not being blamed and punished for something, and instead are being brought in and told they can help us figure this out, and that just changes the whole dynamic.
HS: I’d like to hear more about how leaving out the emotion ultimately drives solutions, creativity, community, success, a win/win.
AB: Well, you start by trying not to get bogged down in the emotion of the historical perspective and it’s not easy. If you feel like you have been treated unfairly, whether you’ve been playing a sport for two decades or you’ve been working in a company for two decades, it’s very hard to remove yourself from the emotional piece. It does take a lot to not be angry and frustrated and want to blame somebody for the fact that you haven’t been paid as much, haven’t had as many opportunities as somebody else. If we can step back, leave the emotion out of it, we can have people working together rather than butting heads and blaming others for what happened in the past. That’s what propels people, companies, committees in every sector forward and creates success.
HS: What else helps guarantee the success of an event or program?
AB: I really do feel very strongly about having men and women part of the conversation on any program that I’m doing. Because even though research does show that when women are together at a conference or in a program and talk about their issues and their problems, women are more likely to get promoted and get a raise and that is good for your overall career, but it’s not necessarily moving the needle. So, in order for us to really make a sustainable, positive change, we have to have men and women at the table together making the decisions. That’s really important to me because it doesn’t work if you only have one group of people at the table, does it? At least this has been my experience, so inclusion for everyone has to be part of what I do.
HS: Ashley, what does leadership mean to you?
AB: To me, leadership means bringing everybody up with you. I’m very conscious of people that don’t have a voice. People that don’t have any power. I think that a good leader is able to bring everyone with them, like the rising tide lifting all boats rather than just going by yourself. It’s like the saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone and if you want to go far, go together.” To me that’s what leadership is. I always tell my kids when you’re a leader, not everyone is going to like you or agree with you. You have to push through that and do what is best.
HS: What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
AB: Waking up every morning, I ask myself, how can I be of service and how can I be a little bit better today than I was yesterday? I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself by any means.
HS: What do you do before you go to sleep each night?
AB: Before I turn the light out, I keep a gratitude journal, nothing fancy, I write three things down that I was grateful for. Also, I read somewhere to think about three things that you did well that day. There’s a difference between what you’re grateful for and three things that you actually put your energy behind that you did well. It doesn’t have to be anything big. It can be little things. But those little moments in aggregate can lead to something bigger. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that you actually did do three good things today. If you watch yourself for a couple of weeks and then go back and look at the three things that you jotted down before you went to sleep, it’s like, Whoa! It compounds and you see that you did 42 things really well!
HS: Ashley, thank you so much for your time; truly, the pleasure has been all mine. You’re shared your foundation, your approach, application, passion, dedication by showing us that success is simple. It’s really about common sense, about putting one foot in front of the other, the importance of equality, leadership, and empowerment, and reminding us that a rising tide lifts all boats.
AB: Thank you Halle, for choosing me to be featured in the gcLi Leadership blog. It is an honor.
Ashley Bernhard founded Haven Hill to advise organizations on creating initiatives focusing on equality, leadership, and empowerment. Ashley considers herself an “equalist.” She specializes in working with both men and women to promote gender equality, inspiring the next generation of leaders. Ashley is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She began her career at Vogue, British House & Garden and Inc. Magazine. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and three children.
Image: Tournament of Champions
Author: Huerndy
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