She’s not an entrepreneur, but Ashley Mercer makes sure Entrepreneurship@DU runs smoothly
Each Friday this summer, the Daniels Newsroom is telling the stories of the behind-the-scenes staff who empower students, faculty and the College at large. Read past stories on our blog.
There were 950 posts on Entrepreneurship@DU’s social media channels last school year—and you won’t see Ashley Mercer’s face in a single one.
Her fingerprints, however, are all over them.
Behind just about every highlighted event, every guest speaker, every piece of student-facing programming is Mercer, E@DU’s special projects and events manager.
“I’m not an entrepreneur,” she said, “but being around all of them has made me realize it’s a lot of hard work. They fly by the seat of their pants, which is kind of how my job goes sometimes. It’s kind of similar, kind of fun.”
Starting up a marketing career
It’s not what Mercer saw herself doing growing up as a kid in Augusta, Kansas. But then again, most of her energy was focused on leaving her agricultural hometown, about 30 minutes east of Wichita.
She fell into a business program at the University of Kansas, and then at the small, private Newman University. She graduated with degrees in marketing and Spanish.
Mercer left college without a dream job—just a desire to work and travel. She did both, tagging along with her dad to Chihuahua City, Mexico, where he was setting up an aerospace factory. She passed her resume around and landed in a marketing role at a different aerospace company.
After a year, she returned to the United States and took a job at an insurance company in Kansas City, coordinating logistics, social media and marketing materials for trade shows.
In 2014, faced with a need to relocate, Mercer and her future husband chose the Centennial State. Without a job, but with a desire for another degree, Mercer began to poke around for positions at the University of Denver.
She started in a program manager role at the Daniels Institute for Enterprise Ethics. After a few years, however, Mercer hopped on board at E@DU, which was expanding at a rapid rate. She welcomed the chance to change positions and expand her responsibilities.
“[E@DU is] underneath the business school, but I feel like it’s such a diverse program; we kind of get to work with students from all across campus,” Mercer said. “We have some art students in our BASE Camp accelerator program. We’ve worked with journalism majors, students from the law school, Morgridge [College of Education]. That’s a fun thing about entrepreneurship. It’s all-encompassing.”
Coordinating student success
Most of Mercer’s time on campus is spent in The Garage, E@DU’s headquarters at the corner of Asbury Ave. and York St. From her office, she takes care of everything from managing finances to updating the website to onboarding adjunct faculty to posting on social media.
“I’m not an entrepreneur, but being around all of them has made me realize it’s a lot of hard work. They fly by the seat of their pants, which is kind of how my job goes sometimes. It’s kind of similar, kind of fun.”
“I’m not an entrepreneur, but being around all of them has made me realize it’s a lot of hard work. They fly by the seat of their pants, which is kind of how my job goes sometimes. It’s kind of similar, kind of fun.”
She’s in charge of logistics for E@DU’s many events too: coordinating parking passes, speakers, food and room reservations. The degrees she has earned during her DU tenure—an MBA and a master’s certificate in project management—have proven essential to carrying out her many duties.
But perhaps her favorite part is taking her laptop to The Garage’s common areas.
“I go next door a lot and sit and work, and the students will be right there working on ideas or homework or will just talk to me about stuff,” she said. “I get to know them really well. It’s super cool.”
She beams like a proud mom watching the student entrepreneurs pitch their ideas through the quarterly 4Impact (formerly Madden) Challenge and at the summer BASE Camp accelerator—both of which, naturally, she coordinates.
“Getting more opportunities to see these kids to grow their businesses or support their startups, I think that’s what gets me really excited,” she said, especially as the E@DU programming grows. “I really like my job. I have friends that I talk to and on Sunday they’re dreading going to work on Monday. And I don’t have that feeling. It’s fun for me because I’m doing so many different things because it keeps it interesting.”
It’s more than she bargained for with that marketing degree from Newman University.
“A lot more,” she said. “But worth it.”