“dreamBig.standOut.goFar”
By Allison Campbell
Ashlei Elise taps her black leather braided-strap sandals on the cream-colored carpet, trying to keep rhythm to Nikki Minaj’s “Super Bass”. Gulping down a vanilla Coke, she whips around to her laptop and clicks the iTunes repeat button. She proceeds to sing “Super Bass” in a tone that can only be described as awkwardly confident.
Her floral tank top is layered with a gray cardigan sweater, which adds a touch of femininity paired with distressed jeans. Her long, light brown hair is partially covered by a trendy purple beanie.
Greeting me with an enthusiastic hug, she is raring to start talking.
The 21-year-old UNC Charlotte senior is majoring in Communication Studies with a concentration in Mass Media. She is this year’s Radio Free Charlotte Station manager, a full-time student and the creator of The Elise Project.
Ashlei says her life requires a balancing act consisting of pre-planning, list-making, time management and a lot of late nights in the library sometimes until 2 a.m.
The Elise Project is comprised of the live talk show, “The Ashlei Elise Show,” the Release Elise News Site, the Ask Ashlei online blog and the self-explanatory radio show “Ask and Tell.”
Her innovation is a direct result of yearning for more opportunities for self-expression. She felt she needed more experience than just working at Student Media. “I just wanted to live out my dreams and I didn’t want to wait,” she said.
Ashlei Elise attended Terry Sanford High School in Fayetteville. Because her parents are in the Air Force, she was shuffled from base to base throughout her childhood. Her father is from Charlotte, which is one reason why she chose to attend UNCC. Also, she says with a smile, “They offered me a scholarship.”
The summer before her freshman year of college, Ashlei lived with her grandmother in Charlotte. Her grandmother didn’t have cable television at the time, so Ashlei was limited to watching local television stations. She recalls viewing talk shows that “did nothing for me.”
As a result, fireworks of inspiration burst in her head. She latched on to the idea of being an entrepreneur and created a talk show geared toward her generation. Thus, the “Ashlei Elise Show” was born.
This drive is what makes her Project unique. The team strives to offer more than just entertainment. Ashlei believes her generation needs to pay more attention to politics and hard news.
She describes the show as “a youthful mixture of ‘The View,’ ‘Ellen,’ ‘Tyra’ and ‘Oprah’.” She adds, “You have politics, current events, music, creativity like Oprah, and the fashion aspect like Tyra,” all of which are her idols.
Twirling her necklace and cracking a slight smile, Ashlei reveals that her boyfriend Christian Soto gave her the necessary push to initiate the show.
When asked about his role as the supportive boyfriend, Christian said, “I didn’t push her too much. She had everything she needed, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do. I just wanted her to know that someone supported her. I knew how bad she wanted it. I believed in her 100 percent.”
Christian serves as The Elise Project’s Psi Sigma Phi Multi-Cultural Fraternity representative. Two Psi Sigma Phi brothers act as the head of security and a marketing and sales representative for the show. As a sponsor of the show, he says that his fraternity offers “a lot of moral support.”
Financial contributions include renting rooms and providing equipment for the filming of the show. Sponsors also contribute by donating wardrobe, styling her hair, and applying her make-up for each show.
Clasping her hands tightly together, she expresses her frustration about the show’s budget. “The budget comes from my pocket,” she says. This means, she and her team are personally responsible for the additional expenses.
The sponsors help get Ashlei’s project broadcast, but she says the team deserves all of the credit for its success. She proudly says, “My team got over 10,000 views [on the news site]. That wasn’t me, it was my team.” The 10,000 hits came over a four-month span.
The Elise Project team consists of 12 members, a majority of them UNCC students. Team positions include two vice presidents, a student photographer from Central Piedmont Community College, contributing writers for the news site, interns and a personal assistant.
Ashlei chooses her interns through an interview process. She doesn’t limit her interns to just UNCC students.
Although she admits, “I didn’t get the backing from school. It just so happens that we are all students here and we have a connection.”
Bethany Shirley, vice president of media relations and booking coordinator for The Ashlei Elise Show, says, “This project isn’t just a college experience, it is something that people might want to do for the rest of their lives.”
Bethany is dedicated when it comes to the project’s success. She says, “If we have to set aside a few hours each day for the project, then that’s what we have to do. It’s something we believe in and we want to see it prosper.”
Implementing a detail-oriented talk show is taxing, Bethany says. “I don’t know how Ashlei keeps herself together,” she said. “If I were in her shoes, I would be a madwoman. But she has to. She is the host, she is the founder of the project.”
There’s a simple method to Ashlei’s madness. “She is always herself, a little bit goofy,” Bethany says. “She deals with stress by being herself.”
With hard work, also comes incentive. Ashlei says her most rewarding feedback was when she received a Facebook message from a girl in Ohio following The Elise Project, saying Ashlei was her inspiration and role-model. The girl said she longed to follow her own dreams but didn’t think it was possible to create something like The Elise Project while in college.
“I don’t see myself as an inspiration,” Ashlei says.“ I’m just doing something I love and it makes me happy when other people enjoy it too.”
She is an inspiration to the people she works with because she is driven to succeed. Sinead Taylor, the Radio Free Charlotte producer, credits Ashlei with strong leadership skills at the station. She says, “I know that the staff has faith in her to lead Radio Free Charlotte to success this year.”
Ashlei plans to develop her leadership skills through her talk show. Eventually, she hopes to get picked up by a local channel. Bigger aspirations include reaching out to MTV and Oprah’s television station.
As for others aspiring to “dream big and go far,” Ashlei says, “Don’t ever think that you can’t do it because someone tells you that you can’t. If you have a vision or goal, set it using reachable steps.”
Random Ashlei Elise Facts
21, Born in London
She screams before each show and performs a random “pep up” dance
She only eats chicken tenders and burgers while working at Radio Free Charlotte
Motto: “dreamBig.standOut.goFar” – The Elise Project slogan
Her hobby is therapeutic art
She laughs it off when embarrassed …
Track Star Alum Returns to Compete in 49er Classic
Story By Cheryl Spainhour
Photos by Sue Knotts
Seven springs ago, senior Reagan Barry, a 49er track star and a talented journalism student of mine, sat outdoors beside a campus pond surrounded by woods, and talked at length about his Straight Edge lifestyle, his passion for hardcore music and track and his dreams for the future.
In March, Reagan flew down from New Jersey to compete again at Irwin Belk Track in the annual 49er Classic, the 49er Track and Field’s first home outdoor meet of the season that’s open to Charlotte alumni, red-shirted and other unattached athletes. The oldest of his field of 19 competitors – he turned 30 on St. Patrick’s Day – he declared upfront it would be his last decathlon.
He’s older than assistant coach Ed Schlicter, a former teammate who also competed in the Classic. “Our brains will never tell us we’re too old to compete,” Schlicter said at the meet.
Although Reagan graduated in 2004, he still ranks in the top 10 in eight events of Charlotte’s Track and Field All-Time Best Men’s Performances. Jake Wainwright, a red-shirted 49er who won the Classic Men’s Decathlon this year, also broke Reagan’s 2002 Pentathlon record. But Reagan doesn’t mind when younger athletes come along and break his records. He encourages competitors and is a natural mentor, says Katie Chin, his fiancée, who flew down from Jersey to watch him compete.
Friday morning, the sun shone brightly over the Transamerica Field, where the Decathlon was well underway. When we walked through the gates, I spotted Reagan right away, down on the field, throwing the discus. Two days earlier, I had met him for breakfast and would not have recognized him except for his stark, blue eyes and the silver ring in his pierced lip. He had a head full of hair, a long, “winter” beard, and was 15 pounds lighter than the last time I saw him. But he’d gone to the barber later that day, and now, down on the field, he looked more familiar – his head shaved, wearing a mini-Mohawk, sporting a 49ers jersey he’d designed for the team of Charlotte alumni he had assembled for the 49er Classic. We walked down the empty bleachers onto the field. Reagan introduced us to his fiancée, a striking, slender woman, who ran track while attending Rider University. He’d met Katie his senior year, when she visited Charlotte for spring break with friends from Rider. He had immediately fallen for her, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that they’d started dating.
After the Discus Throw competition, we headed across the field for the 8th Decathlon event – the Pole Vault competition. Reagan’s 14’11” jump in 2001 still stands as fifth best in the 49ers Outdoor All-Time Top Performances. “I love pole-vaulting,” he said between turns. “That’s one I hope I never have to give up.”
All of the pole-vaulters have their own idiosyncratic routines leading up to the vault. Reagan runs up and down the track once. Then he stands at the top of the runway, bends over twice to the waist, with the fiberglass pole resting on his right shoulder, shouts “c’mon, yeah,” to himself and raises the pole over his head. He juts out his left arm, elbow bent, and he points the pole toward his destination like a jouster, pauses, then sprints down the runway, slings his body gracefully skyward, up and over the cross bar, then falls to the cushioned pit below. He says for a moment it feels like he’s flying. [See video of Barry Reagan pole vaulting in the 2011 49er Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6PqjPyQ1RQ
Transamerica Field filled up with teams for the 49ers collegiate meet and it turned hot around noon – over 80 degrees – as the sun beat down on the track and field. Reagan and his competitors vaulted again and again, cheering each other on as the bar was raised higher and higher. When it was all over, Reagan and three others had cleared 12’11” to tie for second place in the event.
Reagan and the other 18 competitors finished out the Decathlon with the Javelin Throw and the 1500 Meter Run. He placed 12th in the Decathlon. “I was thoroughly happy with my performance,” he said on Sunday, back home in New Jersey. “It’s always an honor to compete with the collegiate kids.”
Reagan now trains for longer-range competitions. He’s run five marathons and will run his sixth in New York City later this year. He and Katie, who workout and train at a Jersey gym, ran their first marathon together in October in the Marine Corps Marathon in Virginia. Reagan competed in an Ironman competition – Beach to Battleship – in North Carolina. Triathlons, he says, test your endurance as an athlete.
Schlicter describes the decathlon as the toughest competition an athlete can do in college and the triathlon as the toughest an athlete can compete in out of college.
“If it’s supposed to be hard and impossible to do,” he said, “Reagan’s going to do it.”
So seven springs later, Reagan’s still running, still competing. He’s still passionate about hardcore music – even more so, he says. He’s got a good job at Qualcom, he bought a house three miles from the Jersey seashore he missed so much while living in Charlotte, and he’s marrying the girl of his dreams next year.
And, oh yeah – he’s still a Straight-Edger at heart. He smiles at the question. “Always will be.”
About Straight Edge:
“Straight Edge dates back ‘to the late-1970s among teens at punk concerts in New York City and Washington … the term was coined in 1981 – it was the name of a song written by Ian MacKaye, lead singer of the band Minor Threat (‘I’m a person just like you, but I’ve got better things to do than … hang out with the living dead … I’ve got the straight edge”) The basic tenets are abstinence from alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, casual sex …” – from “Straight, but with an Edge,” by Susan McCelland, MacLean’s Magazine, May 17, 1999.
