Calendar of Events

Ashley Bowling

Ashley makes things run smoothly by transforming vision into reality, aligning people with priorities, and optimizing workflow. Her dynamic experience is a mixture of strategy, FP&A, PMO, and IT ops in the retail/CPG, financial services, and technology arenas. She finds intellectual challenge as an angel investor, staff at UT McCombs Career Services, and principal at Grasp Global management consulting. She spent her corporate time at Morgan Stanley, MetLife, SunTrust, and Ernst & Young.

Ashley brings wisdom and global perspective from working in diverse organizations and team cultures. She can’t help herself from applying her perception and critical thinking skills to organizational challenges. She flexes to the situation: leads or follows, raises quantitative or qualitative points, shifts to serious or breezy. Ashley empathically connects with and develops people to bring out their best. She has practiced servant leadership and conscious capitalism before she even knew the terms.

Ms. Bowling earned two business degrees: bachelor’s with distinction at Emory and master’s at Harvard, where at graduation the Dean recognized her for co-founding a women’s mentorship program. In Atlanta she served on the boards of the Bobby Dodd Institute, YWCA, and HBS Club. She also was active as a Young Fellow at the Morgan Library & Museum in NYC and a founding member of the Shepherd Center Society. A worldwide traveler and native of New Orleans, she moved to the live music capital because paddle boarding year-round and the progressive business environment felt like an ideally authentic lifestyle.

Bjorn Billhardt

Bjorn Billhardt is CEO of Abilitie, a provider of leadership development programs and mini-MBA programs. Abilitie develops emerging business leaders with team-based business simulations, certified global facilitators, and seasoned implementation teams. Abilitie’s leadership programs

have educated over 20,000 learners across the world, including high-potential employees at companies such as GE, Southwest Airlines, Pfizer, Marriott, and Coca-Cola.

Bjorn has been designing leadership development program and working with executives from world-class institutions for two decades. Prior to founding Abilitie in 2015, Bjorn was the CEO of Enspire Learning, Inc., a custom e-learning development company he co-founded in 2001 and grew to about $5MM in revenue and 50 employees.

Previously, Bjorn worked as a consultant and corporate trainer for BAAN, a Dutch software company, and McKinsey & Company, a strategic management consulting firm. Bjorn holds a BA from the University of Texas and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bjorn lives in Austin, TX with his wife and three young boys. He is a native of Hamburg, Germany and came to the US as an exchange student in high school.