Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashli Hough.
Ashli, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
In April of 2018, I decided to take a leap of faith and leave behind everything I had ever known to get a fresh start. I had recently gotten out of a very toxic and abusive relationship and my family had extended the offer to let me relocate to Austin, Texas. I had been living in Tenleytown in Washington, DC for a few years at the time. Other than my short time in DC, I had been living in Maryland practically my entire life. Other than my parents, I only knew one person moving to Austin that lived in a surrounding area.
Moving to Austin was a huge step in the right direction because I needed to heal and get back to myself. More importantly, I needed to get out of a situation that was deteriorating my mental health and break the pattern of abuse. My partner at the time was not supportive of me spending time with friends outside of the relationship and isolated me from friends and family. Being able to relocate with family really helped me to strengthen those relationships, but also step outside of my comfort zone and meet new people and experience new things. I also could go back to enjoying things I really loved – EDM shows and festivals.
I had always been extremely passionate about my love for live music so moving to The Live Music Capital of the World couldn’t have been a better place for me to rebuild my life. Living in the D.C./Maryland/Virginia (DMV) area, I had the opportunity to experience a lot of great artists over the years at a lot of different venues… As a kid, I had listened to a fair amount of electronic dance music (EDM) over the radio in the early 90s, but it wasn’t until college that I started to listen to artists like Daft Punk, Tiesto, or David Guetta. After college, a close friend I used to wait tables with introduced me to some underground Drum & Bass events that were held weekly and slowly but surely got me into attending dubstep shows in the Baltimore area. She and I later ended up moving in together and we would go out almost every weekend to attend shows at Baltimore Soundstage, Ottobar, Rams Head Live, SoundcheckDC, or Echostage.
At the time I had started getting into the EDM scene, I had been working full time as a program manager for the Maryland National Guard as the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Coordinator, intaking all of the cases for the state and providing sexual harassment and assault prevention training to over 5,000 service members in the Army and Air National Guard. I served eight years in the Maryland Army National Guard as a Medical Service Corps Officer. Attending EDM shows was essentially my outlet to be able to freely express myself and enjoy the music and community. It was the one place that I felt like my stress went out the door and I was fully present in the moment. Some of the shows I remember attending around that time frame were Skream, Skism, Kill The Noise, Flux Pavillion, Cookie Monsta, Doctor P, Above & Beyond, Jason Ross, Seven Lions, Infected Mushroom, and many more.
In December of 2018, I had decided to create a Facebook Group for women+ in the Austin area that also shared a love and passion for EDM. Today with the help of two other women, Briahna Wandel and Lindsay Villanueva, helping me run the ATX Rave Babes Facebook Community, we have around 2.4K members. I came up with the concept because I honestly just wanted to feel safe attending events with other women. From a safety standpoint, I felt it was important to not attend events alone. I remember being groped at a rock festival at 15 years old while attending with several of my male friends. Sadly, situations like this still occur, but I wanted to be proactive about taking steps to mitigate risks. Some women that have attended events have met one another at an event and have walked each other to one another’s cars and that’s exactly what type of community I wanted to create when I started it. It’s been really rewarding to hear other women share how they met at an event and then introduced them to our Facebook community.
I never imagined that it would grow to be as large as it is now, but we really saw a surge in member requests and engagement in the group at the height of the pandemic starting because so many people were looking for a way to connect without being able to attend events. During the pandemic, many promoters were still hosting events following COVID guidelines with limited capacity and social distancing measures. Many of our members were able to still attend events and meet new people by purchasing pods/tables at these types of events through connecting on our Facebook community.
It’s truly been an honor to have such a positive impact in the lives of women in the Austin EDM community by empowering them and connecting them to one another. Prior to the pandemic, we had started hosting monthly meet ups to get together and interact outside of shows and festivals. We have even hosted a rave clothing swap and hope to eventually get back to doing these types of events on a more consistent basis in 2022.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Initially starting out on this venture, we did not anticipate the growth we would have over such a short span of time. When we had about 300-500 members is when I finally had to ask for help in managing the group as well as our social media pages. The bulk of our engagement is honestly in our closed group on Facebook which is not a public space. While we do have social media pages/accounts, we have not been as active as we would like to be because the group has really been a main priority. I find that we are always learning and growing and finding new ways to better delegate out things to keep things moving. I think the biggest things that have contributed to our success so far is honestly just making sure that all of our administrators running the Facebook are on the same page and keeping lines of communication open. This is something that we all do on our free time so sometimes it be challenging between our personal lives and juggling full-time jobs.
My mom actually passed away in September of 2020 and I can’t thank Briahna and Lindsay enough for holding down the Facebook group while I took necessary time to step away from social media to deal with the loss. I would say we all have gone through some personal things where we’ve had to step up for another. I feel thankful to have them support me on this venture and in moments where things have been challenging. They have been a great support system and we work pretty well as a team to screen members and address things as they arise. They really help make things seamless.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
In my life, outside of attending live music events and festivals, I work in the tech and real estate industry. I hope to eventually carve out some time to take courses to become a real estate agent in Austin. I have a huge passion for being able to help others and strong interpersonal skills. Within my work team, I am known to be super innovative and constantly coming up with solutions and really care about professional and personal development.
My educational background is actually in human services. I have Bachelor of Science in Family Studies and Community Development from Towson University. Although I am not actively working in the field I went to school for, I am still utilizing my skills to help others with resource management and actively find ways to be involved in the community. I pride myself on showing up and supporting others.
What are your plans for the future?
In the future, I hope that we are able to do more advocacy and outreach within the community about how to make events safe for everyone. We are still very much just getting started and trying to figure out what the vision and mission of what ATX Rave Babes looks like as we plan for our future. This year we hope to add some more women to our team to help out with screening members, managing posts, and also helping us with outreach through our social media pages. We hope to strengthen our relationships with local artists, business owners that specialize in rave clothing and apparel, as well as promoters and venues to create partnerships to bring the community together and support one another.
Contact Info:
- Email: atxravebabes@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ATXRaveBabes
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ATXRaveBabes
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/ATXRaveBabes
