Get to know Ashley Smith 🎤 | UTAH JAZZ
As the Utah Jazz celebrate women’s history month we get to know co-owner Ashley Smith Smith is one of the few female owners in the NBA and she details how a busy career as an entrepreneur helped set her and her husband Ryan Smith up for a gamechanging venture in
Utah we are here with co-owner of the Utah Jazz Ashley Smith did you know she is also a very successful entrepreneur and businesswoman of one of the biggest dance studios in Utah welcome to smash dance Academy we are in this beautiful Dance Studio One of the most successful in Utah how cool is this so cool welcome to my happy place I love this building and I love what I feel when I’m here and I’m trying we are trying my staff and I to
Create an environment where youth feel the same thing and they get to come here and feel safe and loved and feel empowered to grow and fail and be a better version of themselves every time they come okay let’s take a look around I think this is such a heartbeat
And hub of the whole dance studio tell us why is this important that these are the goals of when you step in the doors so these we developed these um as we learned what we think youth need to be learning as they grow into awesome adults so to us it’s important that we
Are teaching with these skills and that we are learning with these skills and that we are teaching how to use these skills and and highlighting moments where we do it right or maybe do it wrong so at smash we are empowered and we are hardworking and we are respectful
And we are introspective and transparent and together that helps us eliminate the drama from our studio and our classrooms it’s so beautiful I love it it’s a feeling that you are building here you know we call it culture sometimes with the culture of what you’re trying to
Build yes very much a culture and and it’s kind of working and we all want to be here all the time so it’s special it’s special and a good way to connect us by wanting to all grow together in these ways I just wish we could just
Dance right now but let’s do it let’s do it how are you empowering young people and people of all ages really in this beautiful space I think we need space to use our bodies to emote that’s kind of of the idea is that youth are managing there’s so much change happening in the
Life of any child or youth that changes so fast and that that they can come here and and use space and use their body and move and release and feel and understand what’s maybe actually happening in their brains sometimes so yeah we tried to create an environment
That had a lot of light and that it’s open and it’s free for movement and Expression Dance is for sure my passion that’s I grew up dancing and my mom really raised me to love the Arts in general and I really honed in on dance ballet in particular but I did all types
And that is how I coped as a youth so it was a really safe place for me and although the Dance World back then was pretty toxic I was excited about maybe figuring out a non-toxic version of that and Ryan Ryan was a big Champion so at some point
He encouraged me to kind of start teaching in the basement little girls from the neighborhood and I don’t think either of us ever expected I would do it longer than a couple of years but it is very fulfilling and it’s a blast there’s a fun parallel between you and your
Husband of I just have this vision of he and his father starting qual tricks in his dad’s basement and you are teaching dance in your basement in your neighborhood how entrepreneurial and passionate and cool is this that you both have been kind of building this dream together it’s so cool and it’s
It’s who we are together it’s what Drew us to each other I think originally is just our drive for growth and trying new things and making things better and and more exciting um we both enjoy a good experience and we like to provide good experiences so I think in our own ways
We just wanted to kind of do our thing and it is funny that we were both in basements and and grinding and learning hard lessons and I think we’re just really thankful for those days of the basement and the struggle and the fight and disappointment and failure and all of
That because that’s kind of who we BEC that’s how we became us together is is fighting all the friction of building things in our basements so yeah it’s a really cool it’s a really cool part of our story and a lot of who we are what
Was a hurdle that you had to face or a moment that you had to be brave to kind of get to the next thing yeah I mean right out of the gate starting it took a lot I had a lot of fear and I had to
Have some moments of figuring out who I was and if I was confident enough in my skill and my knowledge to go start teaching others so it was a huge process of of me figuring out how to like me and me learning what what I’m good at and and then maybe diving into
Things that I’m not good at so a lot of it has been me figuring out my self worth and that is for sure the biggest hurdle of starting anything of doing anything that we’re scared of of being brave you can’t be brave if there’s no confidence anywhere that you’re going to
Going to maybe succeed or you can’t be brave if you’re not confident enough to fail so it was just that was really really the time of my life where I had to figure out who I was and if I liked that person and I had to develop a love for
That person so I think for all women where we’re we’re in this world and we’re being told what we’re supposed to do and supposed to look like and supposed to talk like and supposed to execute and all the things when actually like we just need to figure out what’s inside and if we
Like it and then if you want to improve it great you get a go and if you want to dive in on it on the things you’re good at Great go grow make it better but it’s that hurdle for women that’s really hard because the world is telling us you’re
Not good enough and we are telling ourselves you’re not good enough and so I think it’s getting over that that’s really hard and and such a rout part of Utah that everyone’s entrepreneurial here it’s such a growth-minded place but I love it that we’ve got a lot of women
Trying to fight that fight and and love ourselves and go do Brave hard things how has Ashley impacted your life and your family’s life she’s the hardest worker I know she’s up before me and she goes to bed after me every single day and it’s crazy no matter how late the game is
She’s up working out at 5:30 every morning and then she goes kids and then you know she created the dance studio um and she doesn’t run away from anything that’s hard and I think for me um who likes to take on big things as well having someone sitting next to me is funny
Walker asked me this what do you see like marriage what’s what’s the best quality and I was like let me tell you about Ash we’re riding side by side we’re riding as co- Captain think she’s in the side car or she’s driving and I’m in the side car
She is not just sitting there along for the ride she’s got the map out she’s pointing like this is when you should stop or this is what you should do I think that she’s she’s really broadened the thought of of like leadership in the family her desire to learn her desire to
Improve her desire to grow has actually taught me like what am I reading what am I doing why aren’t I up early like it’s it’s pushed me and I think that’s the one thing about Ash since the second I met her was she motivates me how important is your partnership as
Co-owners of the Utah Jazz I mean it’s it’s important in in everything right it’s not just with the Jazz I think the Jazz are a unique um thing that we’ve been able to do together but Ash has been that in everything we’ve done you know from the time we met in college to
Both being in the business school together and me looking over and be like you’re way smarter than I am and everything and then like also how you know it’s one of our values but Ashley’s like the most Scrappy person I know when it comes to it’s part of her upbringing
Just like fixing things and like Tech I mean she runs the Apple account for the house it’s pretty awesome to be able to go work with her it’s one thing to be a cone owner of the Jazz but you look at this as a bigger mission what’s the
Bigger mission for being a co-owner of the Utah Jazz yeah when we were making this decision Ryan and I had some very hard conversations as we talked about taking on the stewardship and and the sacrifices that would be involved and the magnifying glass that that would
Come into our lives and it was it was not an easy decision but the final moments of us deciding okay we want to step into this stewardship role were at our kitchen table and a lot of Tears and it was literally the middle of the night and US
Deciding that it was way bigger than basketball and and I was very clear in that if this is about it being an owner in the NBA I’m out because as cool as that sounds I’m not interested and he agreed and so it was that common ground
That got us to this place of okay we got to have this cool rat thing we love together but we get to go take it to do good and to connect and to hear people’s voices and see them and love people and learn from people and
Connect our whole state and just love so when it became about that it was super clear and it’s kind of similar to when we know who we are we can do Brave things because Ryan and I at the end of the day know that’s what we want to do
It makes every hard decision easier I think having a perspective of a woman is is it’s like invaluable but if you actually think about it like let’s say it’s half the demographics of the planet like and if you go to any University and you know half the entrance half the valorian half
The intelligent is there and then you go back to the way we operate it’s pretty bad and honestly I want my daughters to be able to look up and say there’s nothing I can’t go do and I don’t need to compromise who I am how my career my
Life my family works and I think that um how do we make that happen how do we make it easy how do we make it so it’s at least a 50/50 um decision if someone wants to go um rise in this or be successful in this
Part of their life and I think that’s my goal with the organizations that I’m a part of make it 50/50 what example do you want to set for other women that being a part of this big kind of male dominated business is good and we need
More people like that we need all voices we need all voices in every room so if I get to be a female voice in a room of male-dominated sports I want to be there and I deserve to be there and I think my voice is valuable and I think
I’ve had to work hard to believe that so figure out what you believe and what you want to share and where’s the room that you need to be in to share it because because we all have a different perspective whether it’s our gender whether it’s our ethnicity or how we
Were raised or how many siblings we have it doesn’t matter what makes us all different we have a different voice to bring so where is your strength and where’s your voice going to be helpful go be in that room and that’s that’s all I’m trying to do and remember that your
Voice is important and needed somewhere so figure it out and go
Get to know Utah Jazz governor Ashley Smith as she talks about her own passions and supporting Utah through her entrepreneurial efforts.
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