Ashley's love for the ocean started at a young age as she grew up immersed in Malibu surf culture. This beginning revolved around surfing traditional single fin logs, a background that she continually pulls inspiration from while pushing and expanding this style of surfing using modern, sustainably-minded board building materials.
Since her early surfing life, Ashley has been fully engaged in California's surf culture and spent a good portion of it participating in the competitive longboarding scene up and down the coastline, as well as traveling internationally. She began shaping surfboards in 2002, while studying music in Santa Barbara, under the guidance of friend Danny Tarampi. Throughout her surfing and shaping journey Ashley has collaborated with, learnt from, and shared great joy with some of surfing's most admirable characters. In 2005, Ashley joined Bing Surfboards as a team rider and shaper, developing two of her own board models with the brand while continuing to advance her own line of custom surfboards out of Santa Cruz.
Ashley has called Santa Cruz home since 2008, where she's built a beautiful surfing life for herself and son. Throughout life she's explored vast parts of the world surfing a variety of waves on all sorts of boards, and has fostered an intimate connection to the ocean and its many moods. This has given her a breadth of knowledge to pull from and can be seen in the diversity of models she shapes.
Exploring the connective possibilities of the ocean its healing pathways is deeply integrated into Ashley's surfing and shaping. Her personal and business values are one in the same, centered around environmental sustainability, ocean stewardship, inclusivity, connection, and community. One of her favorite things about surfboard building is the opportunity that it allows her to help connect people to themselves, nature, and one another.
"I make surfboards, and try to approach all aspects of life, as part of a mission rooted in love and enthusiasm. Shaping has been a tremendous gift in my life, and it's an honor to be a part of people's surfing evolution."
EcoBoard Ethos
As a mother, Ashley finds herself looking to the future and puts a lot of consideration into what it will hold for the upcoming generation. As a result, she strives to do her part to tread lightly on the environment. The materials traditionally used in surfboard building (polyurethane foam and polyester resin) are not the most eco friendly options available, so Ashley has looked to explore materials and manufacturing methods with a lower environmental impact.
Alongside her glasser - Tyler Hopkins of Locus Surfboards, and their team, tremendous effort has been spent learning how to build high performance boards with alternative materials that carry a lighter environmental footprint. These materials come in the form of EPS foam, bio-based epoxy resins, and Flax cloth. Using these materials, Ashley's surfboards are ECOBoard verified through the organization Sustainable Surf. Ashley is also a Sea Trees ambassador through Sustainable Surf, and with every ECOboard made a Sea Tree is planted!
Significant effort and time goes into every board built, and it is integral to Ashley that quality and performance not be hindered when using these alternative materials. EPS foam boards can be vibrationally sensitive and can be described as sometimes having a "chattery" weightless feel on the wave. Ashley has found that the addition of Flax cloth alongside fiberglass cloth solves this issue. In her words, flax has a "dampening" aspect to it which allows the board to maintain the smooth gliding quality that us surfers look for in a quality board.