Ashley Holmes, Head of Marketing at LUMA Partners

Erik  00:01

We want to welcome all of our listeners to another episode of MRP, Minority Report Podcast with Erik and Kerel. Each episode, we talk with real operators and leaders in media, tech, and business. And we are excited today. Joining us is Ashley Holmes. Ashley is the Head of Marketing with LUMA Partners. Let's jump in and get to know Ashley. Ashley, welcome. How are you?

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Ashley Holmes  00:25

I'm doing very good. I am so excited. You guys have no idea.

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Erik  00:31

We love to hear that. We love to love to hear that. Ashley, we've been excited to have you for quite some time. Tell us a little bit about Ashley Holmes. Where did you grow up? Where are you from?

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Ashley Holmes  00:44

I am a New York City girl born and raised. Queens, specifically, the boroughs, origins are very important. So I'm a Queens girl, still live there. I am the daughter of my mother only. So I'm a single child. And together, my experiences growing up essentially amazing. She is an excellent role model, very strong. She very much has instilled in me just work hard, do what needs to be done and I have taken that thread probably through every single bit of my life from either a professional side, some hobbies, [inaudible] where I'm from. I'm a New Yorker girl. So, that's who I am to start. If you can't tell by the accent, I say "wata" I say "cwahffee". There's also that.

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Kerel  01:28

There it is, there it is. (laughs)

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Erik  01:31

Ashley, I want to ask you a little bit more about what it was like growing up. But first, for those that don't know, what LUMA Partners is, can you tell us what LUMA partners is?

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Ashley Holmes  01:41

Yes, so LUMA Partners, we're actually an investment bank at the center of digital media marketing technology. And we have a very unique position in the ecosystem. Our team is extraordinary. They look at all of the leading companies, their activations, their programs, platforms, their scale of business. And we work very diligently to cultivate relationships of all of these entities in the space so that if or when they're ready to make that golden connection that might lead to an M&A exit, we know the right partnerships that could align very well. That's kind of where we fit into this superly dynamic world we all exist in.

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Erik  02:26

Yeah, I want to ask you a little bit more about that in a second, but I think it's interesting there's so many sort of insights for the industry. There's marketplace reports, there's loom escapes, there's presentations, and then there's a whole lot more, right? You're working with a lot of executives, and you're working with a lot of really, really important people in the industry. What are some of the secrets that you have in order to sort of be able to work with so many different types of individuals that really, really are making an impact on the industry?

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Ashley Holmes  03:01

At the core, it comes from listening, truly listening to the individual and the company that you're speaking to. Our team does a lot of research work where they look into just the habits, scale, not just short term, but long term, in their assessments. And then with anything, at every company, there's a CEO, there's a head of the leadership, and those individuals are really key to our relationship building strategies, because you have to know who you're speaking to, you have to know who you're working with, and where the mindset is, what is the ethos behind the business model. And so through various different nuances, because everything in life is really nuanced when it comes to building, that's kind of how we've cultivated a wonderful brand. Terence Kawaja, the CEO of LUMA, Conor McKenna is our new partner at LUMA, and together, they're really just creating a dynamic headway on how the industry is looking to work together. 

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Kerel  04:03

Ashley, is marketing always what you wanted to do with your career?

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Ashley Holmes  04:07

So my career, it is beyond not a straight path. (laughs) My career was actually headed towards theater. I have a degree in Theater Arts Management, I wanted to run a theatre company on the outside, but interiorly I wanted to be on the stage. And then somewhere in the middle of that I was exposed to events. And I loved trading these experiences. I took the source material for whatever project I had, and just truly elevated beyond what was expected. And since graduation, I did graduate during the fall of the banking industry, so my path actually went into retail. And there, a little more to the marketing side, I developed a love with speaking with my clients, knowing what they wanted, really getting the final touch points of the products that I had that I was selling, or that I had available and knowing what truly was necessary for them to be pleased and happy. And from that history incoming into LUMA, I showed up in the marketing department, just kind of doing a little bit of everything and growing into this position. I've definitely learned that where I sit in marketing is helping my clients achieve their goals, and making sure that what I have is as aligned as best as possible to get them to where they need to be.

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Kerel  05:37

Gotcha, thank you for that. And we just recently saw each other at Possible, LUMA has a big event coming up in May, DMS, then we'll see each other at Cannes. So there's a lot that you're involved in right now and I'm sure throughout the entire year, what does a good day look like?

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Ashley Holmes  05:56

A good day looks like if my pen is consistently crossing off, what to do down the line. That is an excellent day. I think every day is a good day, whether I get wanting to get done, accomplished. Or if I find myself just tacking on new things that are micro to the bigger picture. Because if my list has nothing on it, then there's a serious problem. And so far, thankfully, I have always had something to do. And [inaudible] those things have been given to me, it is I am thinking of other opportunities and ways that we can improve, expand, again, the clients that I've cultivated, the clients that are potentially out there in the industry, just how can I help LUMA position ourselves to really find what they're looking for now and then next year, and then possibly three years from now? I never know what somebody's timeline is, so being as nimble as possible, or having as many opportunities for them is something I'm constantly thinking about.

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Erik  07:03

Yeah, Ashley, you're working across a lot of different types of content, right? Social media, live events, summits, international events, right, intercontinental events.

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Ashley Holmes  07:17

Maybe next time next year, we'll be like out of the galaxy. At this rate. (laughs)

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Kerel  07:25

(laughs)

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Erik  07:25

(laughs) LUMA has gone intergalactic! Right? But you know, I'm always curious because you're exposed to so many different sorts of scenarios there, what are some interesting things that you've learned along the way planning international events, domestic events, hosting, you know, hundreds of executive leaders, what are some interesting things that you've run into, as you've had to sort of navigate that?

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Ashley Holmes  07:49

I think one of the most interesting things I've learned is that not everybody has the same perception on the same thing. Perception and work style, or how they engage the work, I find, varies. And this wasn't hard for me to learn, but I definitely gained a more comprehensive understanding is that you have to be flexible in adjusting to other individuals' work styles or perceptions of the project. But to make sure that you don't lose the core foundation to ensure that what needs to get done a year in remains and stays the same.

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Erik  08:35

That's great. You know, you're really lucky you get to work with some people who are also not only some of the smartest people in the biz...

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Ashley Holmes  08:42

Powerhouses.

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Erik  08:43

Powerhouses, right?

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Ashley Holmes  08:44

Every single individual on our team is a powerhouse. And I'm not being you know, grandiose about a lot of it. So it's kind of unsaid, but here at LUMA, it's Baptism by fire. And you may say, oh, you know, that's kind of, like, strong, but it's designed to be because it allows every individual to take ownership of their projects or what they need to get done. And having that knowledge that you're responsible for this, this is yours to do, it affects everybody. But then what ends up happening is you're just going and not in like an unhealthy way. You just know what needs to get done, you get it done and it allows you to actually be able to turn to your [inaudible] say, "How can I help you because I'm already set?" And that's what we do very well. Terry is endless with ideas. And so he'll come out and he'll say, come here and we're ready. "Okay, what do you got? Let us know." And then he'll tell us and we will just get going into it. It sometimes takes five minutes and some takes a month or so. But by us all having just the foundations of being self sufficient, reliant but also knowing that we are a very formable team allows us to accomplish so much more than I think probably a lot of incumbents would be surprised about.

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Erik  10:03

Yeah, yeah. I'm always fascinated having been part of some events and seeing both Terry and Conor and their tremendous presenters, and they have a tremendous presence and they really know how to engage a large audience. But yeah, still make it feel really kind of intimate as well, is a really awesome set of skills. What are some things that you feel like you've kind of learned from the folks that you're surrounded with?

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Ashley Holmes  10:29

So actually, when you asked me this question this popped in my brain - Terry once told me, so I definitely struggle with grammar. I would swear up and down in my head that this sentence has an "of," that "on," that "a" in there, and when I read it, it's not there. And so that was something that was brought to my attention a bit earlier on, and it's something that I've struggled with since third grade. So it's been a constant fight for me to make sure I dot my I's and cross the T's because you know, I have a lot of great other attributes, you know, how you present yourself from a communication standpoint is so always important in any setting. And to your point, Terry once told me, you check twice and cut once, and that is something I kind of took to heart. That it's okay, if you're double checking, you're double checking, that's fine. But make sure that once you send it out there is exactly how it needs to be. And that is something my other associates, who is, she's my Yin to my Yang, she is extraordinarily great at grammar, so I've learned working with her some tricks and trade to know how to check myself and my work more efficiently so that when I do produce something, it is as best as possible. And yes, I've definitely missed a couple of words. Grammarly is my best friend. But that's what I'm saying. Understanding where my weaknesses are and that I need Grammarly and these are things that helped me to double check and make sure that things are going the way it needs to go.

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Erik  12:02

That's great.

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Kerel  12:02

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for sharing that too. Because we all have things that we can we can work on, right. And I think it's important for our listeners to hear that no one's perfect no matter what level you are in your career, there's always going to be something that you can work on. And Grammarly is a tool that I use all the time. (laughs) So I'm right there with you. Ashley, the next question, so, in the past, we would ask people about work life balance, but kind of changed that question up a little bit because I think people are tired of talking about work life balance, so I'm gonna ask it a little bit differently, which is how much time do you spend in your job versus in the world?

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Ashley Holmes  12:43

BC or AC? Before of after COVID?

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Erik  12:49

(laughs)

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Kerel  12:49

(laughs) After.

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Ashley Holmes  12:51

So after COVID, I've definitely created a firm stop time for myself. When there is no core engagement in my [inaudible] that particular moment. So let's just say there's nothing super important, not just super important, but something that is very time consuming or time crunching on the horizon, once I leave work, I leave work. So like I said, my history is in theater. I sing musical theater. It is something, it's my first passion that I have. And I have neglected it probably for the past 10 years. So this year, to answer your question, I joined a cabaret class. I never done cabaret. And I made sure that I have certain times out the week, because I paid a whole lot of money for this class, that I'm gonna go and no work is happening. It was a forced time for me to completely disconnect from work. And I'm happy, I feel elated in my class to be doing something that really energizes my soul. I am firmly convinced that no matter what you do, even if you love your job from here to eternity, if there's also something else that feeds your soul, you can not neglect it. You really have to give concerted effort to that as well because what supports you is multifaceted and just leaning so hard into work, if you love it, that's even more wonderful. If it's something that feeds the other thing that you love, that's great, but still giving so much into work, I'm a firm believer you need to counterbalance the stuff with the other things that also feeds your soul. So yes, work life balance. Listen, bills got to get paid. You know, I like certain things in life. And I have certain goals, whether that is raising a family, elevating your career, buying a house, retiring at 50, whatever your goals are, work does support that. So you should never just be flippant and say "Oh 5pm And I'm done." I mean that, if you can do that and that's a choice you can make and you're still successful, by all means rock how you rock. But if you know that you need to still do certain things that may keep you up to 7pm at night, 11pm at night, sometimes 1am because rendering a video that has a ton of effects on it and stuff, and it just doesn't want to work. That's what needs to get done to ensure that you can do the other things that make you feel good.

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Erik  15:26

You know, you earlier mentioned kind of what it was like growing up. And my question for you is as you're thinking about your life now and when you were a little girl, with your mom, like, did you see yourself going down this path? Or did you think things would be different? As you were talking to your mom, if you could rewind and think about young Ashley.

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Ashley Holmes  15:51

Yes, young Ashley was a theater kid, young Ashley was a punk, young Ashley loved listening to Linkin Park and Korn and System of a Down. At the same time, she listened to the soundtracks of Westside story and In The Heights, and she would wait at the stage door to see Adam Pascal coming out from Aida and getting her Playbill signed, that I was a pure theater child. And like I said, I'm raised by a single mother, I'm African American descent, and so she afforded me all the wonders of artistic joy, all my heart could imagine but she also said to me, "Ash, you have to get a job. Whatever you do in college, whatever you do, it has to support." And what I chose to do was find that bridge, hence theater arts management. And I will say as I've moved more and more to the management, to getting a job, to doing what was necessary, I'm slightly jealous of the Gen Z generation, who are actually flying a little farther and faster on their dream. Some of them are making it, some of them are not, but they're sticking with it probably a little bit stronger than the millennials had. I am now relearning that I'm trying to regain some of that [inaudible] that I've lost, if that answers your question. I am not where I dreamed to be, but I know I've made my life what it needs to be. And I'm good. Period. I'm good.

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Erik  17:25

Oh, that's great. That's great. Who were some other folks that were influential in your life when you were younger? Was it family, was it family friends, who else was there sort of guiding Ashley?

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Ashley Holmes  17:39

It was just odd, but it was cinema. It was the actors on the stage for the longest time Audra McDonald, who is on her way to an EGOT, I hope she gets one, one day to getting her Oscar. But I think 8-time Tony winner. And I gravitated towards her because she was one of the very few African American soprano theater actors on the stage that was getting primetime marquee positioning. My heroes are definitely, was in the songs of the musicals that I listened to. It was Happily Ever After, it was characters that sing loud and true. [Inaudible] as I'm older, I'm looking at how my mother raised me things that she did, the things that she accomplished and I realized a lot of who I am today, it happens people assume that your parents, that as you get older, the more you understand your parents, that factor is so real. And she was more of my hero than I definitely ever gave her credit for when I was younger, because I'm just like her. I'm independent, I got my stuff together, you know, and I always make sure that at the end of the day, I'm okay.

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Erik  18:56

Yeah, I was just gonna ask you, if you felt like there was a lot of similarities there now, as you look at your life now, to what you just described. Sounds like there are.

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Ashley Holmes  19:09

It's true because as our, let's say our industry, but just this world and living in general, in this country we live in it is a country that is awesome and great, but it's not a safe country that supports an individual when times are really tough. There has to be just a lot of mitigating circumstances for you to be square. And even for individuals who have sacrificed a lot for this country, veterans still waiting days, months on end for the simple services. It's outrageous in a lot of ways. And so our country and growing up in New York in more of an urban environment, being able to be self reliant, is very much important. And I think unfortunately, as for myself and this collective that you must have, "I can do well all on my own," maybe has caused us to lose a little bit of the community initiative of support that together we operate stronger, we grow a bit better. That kind of structure, especially in the urban communities, I think, maybe has lost a little bit. But you know, hopefully the next generation will do it better and get it right.

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Kerel  20:26

Ashley, what advice would you have for anyone that's looking to enter the field of marketing?

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Ashley Holmes  20:32

I would say you have to understand what you may want to do in marketing, because marketing is broad, it is not a slender silo, it is so horizontal, it goes beyond horizon. And that's okay. Because that means that you can find your slot anywhere on that plane. But you kind of have to know what you want to do because it's very easy to say, "Okay, I want to be into marketing," you're doing social media, you're really building out campaigns, and you don't care a bleep about how some [inaudible] out or whatever is happening there. In fact, you may want to think a little bit more on the creative side of marketing, or when it comes to data, you really love the data, you can care less about the art, reduce artwork, as you want to know what happens after that campaign goes on and rolling through. So marketing is broad, just try a little bit of everything, especially in the beginning, try as many things as you can. I didn't do this. And I'm also old generation, you just kind of go straight up as opposed to hopping around. I definitely think that hopping around things definitely has advantages on building your skill sets. Try a couple of different things, and especially things that you're completely unsure about in the marketing field. And anything can be marketing to a certain extent. I think it is growing and expanding. There's no fine definition. But just once you get to a certain point, you know what you want to do, just become as skilled and knowledgeable as you could possibly be in that vertical or verticals, because that allows flexibility, and allows imagination and innovation. And that's when your own personal creativity really comes through.

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Kerel  22:14

Yeah, I love the part about imagination and innovation, so true. What's a book everyone should read or a movie everyone should watch and why?

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Ashley Holmes  22:24

So I'm stick with movies. I just recently saw Origin by Ava DuVernay. And listen, if you're gonna go to the theater and you want to watch monsters fight, I love that, go see Godzilla all day every day. But Origins was a heartbeat for me personally back to a form of storytelling that I have not seen in a very long time. It did hit home that the lead character was African descent woman and was looking at nursing homes to put her mother in. So I was tears out in the first 15 minutes, [inaudible] my mother had to hold her hand because it was a true mirror of where my life will possibly be in the next five to actually next 10 years or so. But from a storytelling standpoint, the way that Eva approached a very difficult concept of racism, which we're still dealing with today, it is so tiring and saddening that as humans on this planet, we still don't get it. And watching that movie, it just hurt because it is a situation, a story that looks like we all feel like the end of the book, the end of the lesson is clear. And yet nobody's learning it. Or they are really strong force for doing their damnedest to make sure that we all drown in this horror. And she had her own, based on the book Caste, I believe it was based on the book "Caste" and she kind of kept to that. But there was some revelations about things are still happening in India to a specific set of the community of these individuals where they're not allowed to sit in chairs in school, the children don't do that, or they're only allowed certain jobs that are just reprehensible. And this is happening today. And at the end there are forward minded adults and individuals in these areas who are seeing this and just think it's okay and it's not okay. And that movie, it doesn't matter what ethnicity you are, it's something to see and to take in to realize that even though your life might be okay, things in your world may be good to go, things are not right in other parts of this country and not just what's happening in Ukraine, not just what's happening on the Gaza Strip, not just what's happening in certain parts in our own country, the whole world, all of us has issues and no you can't fix the world, but you definitely have control over your universe. That will echo and you definitely have to be conscious about. And I don't care if people say "Oh, too woke," this sort of thing, you know what, being a human being is being a human being period. If you can't do that, then we have a whole - this is what it is - people understand being human and we have to really find a way to just get to a middle ground because we're spreading out way too much across this world.

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Erik  25:26

Thanks for sharing that Ashley. We'll have to look for that. You said Origin, right? 

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Ashley Holmes  25:30

It's "Origin," I believe is based in the book "Caste". I have definitely been in my black creative mode this year. So I saw that movie. I saw The Book of Clarence which I believe will be on Netflix so watch next week. That was a very interesting take on the Bible, the story of Jesus of Nazareth and it's good. It's very good. That's another big one I would say. Just different storytelling perspectives, changing the view.

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Kerel  25:56

Right, right. Alright, I want to end on a fun question. Tell us what's in your music rotation right now?

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Ashley Holmes  26:02

Sure. Cowboy Carter, the whole album is there. That's fine. Amy Winehouse has popped up again, because the new movie is coming out. I have a couple of musical theater bits in there since I'm going to be performing my cabaret. So, Side Show and Jacqueline Hyde is in there. And actually The Book of Clarence soundtrack. That's another, that's a kicker as well.

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Erik  26:27

Alright, can't wait. Ashley cabaret coming soon. Can't wait!

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Ashley Holmes  26:31

Oh, thank you, thank you. Yep, I'm excited! I get to see as loud as I want in the highest note in my register without somebody saying, "You're too loud," I'm like, "And I know it."

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Erik  26:42

And you're like, "And I paid for it."

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Ashley Holmes  26:45

Boom dot com. Yes I did.

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Erik  26:48

Well, Ashley, it's been a lot of fun hanging out with you. Thanks for hanging out with us. And a lot of times our listeners and viewers like to stay in touch. What are some ways that they can stay in touch with you?

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Ashley Holmes  26:58

If you wish to reach out to me by all means you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm sure you guys have my deets. And yeah, so send me a message. Love to chat. And like I said, we're all in this together, so let me know what I can do to help you out.

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Erik  27:15

Thanks a lot, Ashley. Thanks, everyone for listening to another episode of Minority Report Podcast with Erik and Kerel. You can find all kinds of episodes where you find all of your audio and video. Thanks, everyone.

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