By Anne W. Semmes
Stephanie Dunn Ashley comes to her 2021 Sentinel Award as if groomed for it. A thread runs through her life that resonates with the desire to give back. With such an impulse she is perfectly placed as CEO of the Greenwich based Metro New York North Chapter (MNYN) of the Red Cross. Think emergencies, home fires, floods, building collapses – providing shelter, food, clothing, emotional support, and certified training – not only in Greenwich, but throughout Westchester County, Rockland County, and West Point Military Academy. That’s a population of 11 million.
It wasn’t easy stepping into that role in the full force of Covid last spring of 2020. “I’ve been a virtual employee since I started!” shares Ashley on her morning walk. (She’s a multitasker.) Ashley had left behind her 13-year job as Director of Special Events for Greenwich Hospital working in “the hot zone for COVID,” to find herself working remotely from her Cos Cob home.
“Instead of being able to meet her new management team, staff, 38 board members, and work in her new office,” says Giovanna Miller, board chair of the MNYN Red Cross Chapter, “she was forced to start her Red Cross career at home, online, and rarely having the personal touch of starting a new job.
“In the true Stephanie Dunn Ashley fashion,” adds Miller, who succeeded Ashley in the Director job at Greenwich Hospital, “she had a positive attitude and not only took on all the responsibilities as if she were a seasoned CEO, but also made quite an impression on all the Red Cross staff and volunteers in the region and even nationally.”
New blood collection site
Ashley is fully versed on the vital role of platelets and plasma, and proud of the new fixed blood collection site included in the renovation of the Red Cross Greenwich headquarters. with a ribbon cutting planned this fall. The site will allow the collecting of whole blood, platelets, and plasma.
“Platelets are the blood clotting material for your blood. If you have a clotting disorder, if you have sickle cell anemia, if you’re a cancer patient, a trauma patient, it’s really important to get platelets. And platelets have a shelf life of five days. If you don’t have that supply, and you can’t constantly replenish it, those patients aren’t able to get it. And plasma is commonly used for trauma, burn and shock patients, and for people with liver disease or clotting factor deficiencies.”
With the current nationwide blood shortage, that fixed blood site is especially vital, as are the community blood drives Ashley’s chapter will be hosting, she says, “where you can have 100 to 150 people come in and give whole blood which is fantastic.”
Red Cross to the rescue
In January Ashley’s Red Cross chapter responded to a building collapse in Yonkers. “With 110 units,” she tells, “we housed 100 residents for over ten days… Again because of COVID, we couldn’t set up shelters…So, we had to put them up in two different hotels.” Ashley was inspired by the stories from the recovered residents of “how thankful and hopeful they were that the Red Cross was there.” There was that lady in her late 80s who shared what she’d learned of Red Cross safety, Ashley tells. “She made sure before she went out of her apartment, she touched the door and the door was hot. So, she didn’t open it, and she put a towel underneath the doorframe to make sure no smoke was coming in. And then she put a sheet outside her windows so that the firefighters would know that she was there.”
Coming down the fire truck ladder, the lady shared, ‘Then I saw the Red Cross and they came and said we’re going to take care of you.” “Whatever she might have left in her apartment,” notes Ashley, “we were able to get her anything she needed, and she was so grateful.”
Cos Cob Fire Police Patrol
Ashley is no stranger to fire recoveries. For years she’s been first on the scene as a volunteer service member of the Cos Cob Fire Police Patrol CCFPP, the only organization in town she says that does salvage and recovery after a fire. She’d signed on with her fundraising skills as CCFPP board president but wanted to be able to “talk the talk” for that fundraising. So, she routinely passes rigorous tests to maintain her status as a firefighter and EMT, thus is able to see onsite what’s needed in firefighting equipment.
School days lessons
That community minded thread traces back to Ashley’s school days at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City. “They are community service oriented from preschool,” she tells. “The child at Sacred Heart is supposed to give back and what they can do for others and how they can be of service. And that’s not just in book smarts, but in spirit, mind, body, soul.”
Ashley’s upper school English teacher Victoria Allen confirms, “Stephanie’s innate love for people and her desire to serve her community were fostered during her years at Sacred Heart, where she was surrounded by living examples of faith and service to others.”
Upon graduation, Ashley took charge of her class’s annual giving fund serving on the Alumni board. “So, I’ve really enjoyed giving back to not only my school but then taking that which was ingrained in me since a child, and how can I make a touch point on where I am in my world.”
Choosing hospitality
Ashley would take that touch point into the hospitality business working for private clubs. “I loved food, wine, entertainment. You’re providing the members with a beautiful opportunity to celebrate a milestone in their life, a happy moment, or even if it’s a sad moment like a funeral. I’m very much a person of warm welcoming, opening, inviting, which has made COVID so hard for me.
“Being in the hospitality industry was fantastic,” she says, and it was while serving up hospitality at Indian Harbor Yacht Club that she met her husband-to-be, Gary Ashley, similarly engaged as manager of the Riverside Yacht Club.
Married and moving off to the Aspetuck Valley Country Club in Weston, with twins on the way, Ashley realized with husband that “two people in the hospitality business that work nights, weekends, holidays, wasn’t really going to cut it.” Working for a nonprofit would. No big stretch to find ideal a directorship of Alumni Relations in the development office of Sacred Heart Greenwich. “It was a good hybrid and transfer because it was still kind of hospitality in a different mindset,” she says. “It was still working for an organization, a school that was giving something back.”
Greenwich Hospital years
That Sacred Heart connection would bring Ashley next to her job at Greenwich Hospital as Director of Special Events. That Hospital had played a big part in the Ashleys’ life. “Our girls were premature twins, and they spent quite a few weeks in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and they had incredible care and have thrived in their life since then.” Ashley had been contacted by the Director who was moving off. “She was also a Sacred Heart graduate and remembered working with me when I worked at Indian Harbor…When I had this opportunity to work for the organization that gave us the health and wellbeing of our children, I jumped at it…A NICU mom is like a Sacred Heart mom, once a NICU mom, always a NICU mom.”
She looks back on those 13 years as Director as “a rather robust career, just getting in and trying to raise money to change the lives of other people…administering the fundraising events, and events were a way to celebrate and to showcase all the good work and all the good things that were happening at the Hospital.”
A tribute
The last word on Ashley comes from a special friend from childhood in those Sacred Heart schooldays, Alexis Morledge. “Stephanie is a born and proven leader. Not only does she see, and execute to perfection, all the minute details, but she has the ability to grasp the big picture and build the teams necessary to get any project accomplished. We have been best friends for over 40 years, and been professional colleagues for over 25, and it’s a sincere pleasure to collaborate with her on anything. The Red Cross and Greenwich are indeed fortunate to have such a strong and compassionate woman so involved in her community.”
