I co-lead Cisco HackIT, which is Cisco's largest 24-hour global hackathon. For the past two years, we have worked with Ash as a Pitch Coach to work with each of the Cisco HackIT Finalist teams to perfect their business pitch. Ash definitely brings a coaching process that produces results. There was a night and day difference between the pitches the teams gave on the first day of the hackathon to when they gave their pitches during HackIT Finals. Ash was able to teach the teams the magical formula to pitch successfully to any audience, anytime, through the art of storytelling and using his TIE + P Model. Ash helped the teams expand their business idea’s intrigue, persuasion power, opportunity value, and most importantly gain internal support of their ideas.

Ash introduced me to novel and compelling methods of sharing my organization's story that have helped me explain and engage potential donors. He began by getting to know me, and my background, as well as my reason for founding my organization. From there, we considered the "levels of involvement" for potential listeners. Ash helped me develop my story as a human issue, going wider than just the focus of my organization and making the company mission and vision more applicable to any individual. I am so grateful for Ash's help; I now have a personal story that is well thought-out, concise, and engaging. Thank you!

When I was looking to branch out in my career to a new industry, Ash provided very valuable insights on how to expand my reach and contacts in these new industries and demonstrate value and relevance of my past experiences to companies in the new industries. Working with him was an eye-opening experience in just how many new creative avenues Ash could come up that would expand and enable my reach in these new industries. Best of all, Ash is genuinely driven to make a difference as a coach, and it shows in every interaction.

I heard Ash speak at the DevNet Create conference for 2019. In the vein of leading and inspiring by example, giving a talk on how to perfect a pitch for a product, Ash delivered an exciting, committed, inspiring talk with a clear vision on the subject of exactly how to develop an exciting, committed, inspiring, visionary pitch that will reach your target audience in the heart as well as the head. This kind of training is essential for anyone trying to get support for their product or idea, but it's also a skill that anybody would do well to get training in for any field of endeavor. Listening to Ash coach the attendees at the conference as they volunteered to give their own pitches afterwards, it was clear that Ash is a world expert trainer as well. Bravo!

I recently attended a developer conference where Ash spoke about storytelling. This was a refreshing topic to a room full of engineers who will have to clearly communicate an idea or convince others to do something. I really enjoyed the content and look forward to using the strategies he gave.

My first session at the DevNet Create 2019 conference was the workshop on "The Role of Stories In Design Thinking" given by Ash (along with Kristen and Carlene from Cisco). It was an awesome and engaging session. We learned about using the storytelling process to create excitement, connections, and transformations. Ash invited several attendees to pitch their product/solution using the story process during the workshop, and he coached them along. The ideas presented have helped me to kickstart my own creative process. I was able to speak with Ash after the session, and we continued to have conversations throughout the conference. I find Ash to be both a fascinating person and engaging speaker, and I highly value his leadership insights. I look forward to working with Ash in the future!
The DevNetCreate workshop was not recorded
but here is a brief interview by theCUBE: