We were lucky to catch up with Ashleigh Clews recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ashleigh , thank you so much for joining us today. There are so many topics we could discuss, but perhaps one of the most relevant is empathy because it’s at the core of great leadership and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your empathy?
My empathy for all living things especially the animal world runs deep. Not only can I “feel” what another person may be feeling, I can often times feel what an animal may be feeling. It is a blessing and a curse. I have often tried to understand how this level of empathy developed and the best I can come up with is that it is the result of growing up in a broken home. I have taken a variety of personality tests and usually fall into the “harmonizer” category which is interesting because I would not describe my childhood as harmonious. I believe that even as a very young child I wanted everyone to just get along. So in that regard the development of empathy to try to create that makes sense. My wonderful mother and grandmother taught me to respect all creatures including the less popular like snakes, spiders and bees. My grandmother was an orphan and once told me that she would sneak the stray cats and dogs into the orphanage because she felt like a stray herself. While I was not an orphan, her story resonated in trying to give a voice to those animals that do not have one.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My name is Ashleigh Clews and I am the Curator of the Animal Care and Rescue Center(ACRC) at the best aquarium in the world, the National Aquarium. The National Aquarium has been the heart of Baltimore City’s Inner Harbor since 1981. I started volunteering at the aquarium in 2001 and have been a full-time employee since 2004. Since that time I have swimming my way up the ladder from Aquarist Aide to Aquarist Trainee, Aquarist, Senior Aquarist, Manager and finally Curator since 2018. I have worked the majority of my career “off-site” from the main facility in an important but less known part of the aquarium’s operations. Myself and my incredible team are responsible for the care and well-being of each and every animal that arrives at our facility prior to transferring to our amazing exhibits at the main facility. Basically, fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and even invertebrates start their journey at the ACRC.
I grew up in the Baltimore area and clearly remember visiting the aquarium every summer as a child and deciding at an early age that I was going to work there one day. While my Mom and grandmother(Honey) fostered my love and respect of this beautiful planet and ALL its inhabitants, I felt drawn to the water and what lived in it from the very first time I saw the ocean. I connected to its vastness, its power, its mystery and of course its beauty.
So one would naturally think that I went to some beautiful college on the water in a tropical paradise, right? Nope. I went to Frostburg State University in the mountains of western Maryland. While I had ALOT of fun and met many of my lifelong friends there, I only stayed for two years and then transferred to Towson University to get closer to the aquarium and major in something related to the marine biology field. So I got two degrees, one in Broadcast Journalism and the second in Psychology with a focus on Animal Behavior. While that is not the typical degree(s) one thinks of when thinking about a field in science, I have used the Animal Behavior degree on an almost daily basis. And this is true when dealing with scaly animals as well as the human ones.
I have had a wonderful and fulfilling career with more incredible experiences than I count(think diving in 40 degrees in 100 feet of water in the pitch dark at 3:00 in the morning looking for very large sharks), the thing that excites me the most is talking the talk AND walking the walk when it comes to all things Conservation. Just having a small part in a guests experience when they are looking in awe at an exhibit and its animals is beyond rewarding. Many of those experiences translate to a new connection to our oceans and the importance of protecting them and all of their inhabitants. That goes for streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, bays and everything in between. They all contain precious ecosystems that contribute to our planet’s health and in turn our health.
I also have to mention my absolute love of sharks. I love nothing more than the challenge of meeting/speaking with someone is scared to death of something they know almost nothing about besides what they saw in Jaws(great movie of course). Sharks are incredibly misunderstood(I call them the pit bulls of the sea) and just need some good PR. I can’t change everyone’s mind, but I can try.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I would say that early on in my career qualities such as a hard work ethic, a genuine desire to learn and the ability to be humbled by the smallest and weirdest of creatures were all important to my development and progress. As I moved through my career and into Senior and then management roles, it became necessary to embrace the importance of building the skills necessary to train and eventually manage all kinds of people and personalities. This often takes much more patience and less reward than solely managing animals. Even though humans can communicate more clearly with each other, they are much more complicated. I have over the years learned to really enjoy the people management piece and the challenges that come with it. Watching someone who was an intern of mine become very successful in the field is incredibly rewarding. Still not as rewarding as training a shark to voluntarily swim into a stretcher, but…
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
I am not sure that challenge is the perfect word, but more of a crossroads. I just marked 20 years at National Aquarium and when I thought about how quickly those years seemed to pass by, it prompted me to start thinking about what the next 20 years look like. There is certainly a typical path in this industry but I tend to not always take the path of least resistance(unlike water). The knowledge and experience I have gained coupled with the fact that I am fortunate enough to have chosen and been successful in a field that I am genuinely passionate about has resulted in many exciting potential opportunities going forward. I have worked with and met so many unique people over the course of my career but we all have one thing in common and that is a passion for wildlife and a desire to conserve this incredible rock we live on. So, naturally my adventurous sprit wants to see and do more while I can but no matter what happens the National Aquarium will always be my home.
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