- One word to describe yourself: Ambitious
- Alma Mater: Spalding University
- Favorite book: "The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom" by Don Miguel Ruiz
- Favorite TV show: "The Good Wife"
- Favorite movie: “The Notebook”
- Favorite hobby(ies): Creating candy buffet displays
- Fun fact about yourself: She has over 25 aunts and uncles combined.
- What is your favorite transit system (outside of the one you work for or have worked for!) and why?: MARTA and CTA - They are both user friendly and offer several different forms of transportation.
Ashley N. Duncan is the quintessential example of a person working in Transit who is actively engaged in being innovative, displaying commitment to transit and works daily to make life long contributions to transit, both inside the walls of TARC, Transit Authority of River City, and outside in her local Louisville, Kentucky community. Duncan’s professional philosophy is to “Increase awareness of social, economic and educational disadvantages through leading diversity advocacy and community wide volunteerism.” Duncan is a Louisville native who has been employed at the Transit Authority of River City (TARC) since the age of 14. Duncan started off in a summer internship program and maintained her working relationship through high school and college. Duncan has worked in every department at TARC over her close to 19 year span and prides herself on knowing the company as a whole.
Duncan currently serves as a director of diversity and inclusion; the youngest director at TARC. Duncan earned her Masters of Science in Business Communication from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.
Executive Director of TARC, J Barry Barker said “Ashley has not only become intimately familiar with all aspects of TARC’s operation from Accounting to Maintenance, Operations to Administration. She has also established a national presence, interacting with her counterparts throughout the United States.” Barker also said “Ashley, quite simply is a class act. I have known Ashley since she started at TARC over 10 years ago. I have followed her career at TARC closely. She is fully engaged in what she is working on no matter how mundane the task may seem. She is thorough — 90 percent is not good enough — 100 percent is what she gives and expects in return. This is incredibly important in a business as people intensive as TARC.”
Duncan recognizes the culture at TARC as one which quite simply cares about team members and certainly about customers. Duncan is very people oriented and strongly grounded in the belief that every individual should be treated with dignity and respect. No matter what her role at any given time, she has been not only a stalwart in supporting the culture but propagates and nurtures that culture. Duncan is an innovator of changing the way business is done by leveraging the resources made available. Duncan believes in her father’s parenting advice of “never taking a fence down until you know why it was built” but also encourages fellow colleagues to abandon the concept “but we’ve always done it that way”. Examples of these, while confidential due to the nature of her role, can be include recommendations, suggestions or even in some cases investigation outcomes are crucial to the relationships of many individuals.
Much of the responsibility in Duncan’s role is to make sure employees, customers and even applicants are treated with dignity and respect. One of the challenging pieces in her role is making sure people don’t see her as their personal advocate but a champion for doing things according to the law and/or making sure policies and procedures are managed to the highest degree of care. One of the focuses Duncan has tasked herself with is revitalizing the hiring process at TARC by finding creative ways to reach out to the local community, developing a culture that recognizes diversity while cultivating the spirit and letter of inclusion. Asking hard questions and creating opportunities for the available market of possible applicants.
"I think the most important piece is just remembering that we work for our community, we work for the people that don't have access to transportation. I know that sometimes we can kind of get bogged down, or into our own personal silos, but remembering that needs to be at the forefront of our mind at all times. So even if it's not necessarily in the forefront of driving a bus or cleaning a bus, I think what I enjoy the most is just working with the people here and in our community to provide access to jobs and reliable safe transportation."
"Honestly (the industry) is really big, but it's really small. There is the opportunity to continue to learn from partners organizations. I think that there is always going to be a need for public transportation, so understanding that we can always get better. We can continue to grow and we have a long history. It's a small network when you think about it, it's really big, but everyone in transit knows each other."
"One of the things that I think is happening more in including different generations into the work force and helping people how they can work together successfully."
(On growing the field of diversity and inclusion) "I would say to not give up. I think that there are a lot of places where it is so new to some organizations, especially the smaller agencies, so just never give up. There is always an opportunity to teach people what it means, to continue to grow and evolve."
