Q&A with Ashly Hale Sr. Manager, DSP and DA Service Level Standards

Tell Us a little about your self?

I started working at Amazon in 2014 as a Sr. Instock Manager in Private Brands. Since then, I’ve been promoted to leadership roles and gained experience across program, product, business intelligence, and analytics. I’ve had incredible support from fellow leaders and mentors along the way who’ve believed in me and encouraged me to take on roles that initially seemed intimidating. I’m amazed by the talented people I work with and their passion in building for customers. The scale and impact we have is incredible. Looking back, I’m proud of how much we’ve accomplished and how much I’ve learned and grown along the way. I’ve been at Amazon for almost 9 years and it’s still very much Day 1. My passion is building for customers and working with a team. I try to create an environment where we come together to tackle hard problems, push each other to be better, and have some fun along the way.?

What is your favorite Amazon memory?

There so many of them, it's so hard to choose just one! I would say one of my favorite memories at Amazon is back in 2019 on Bring Your Kids to Work Day. Our team set-up a Last Mile delivery game for the kids and the organizers labeled all the hallways with color-coded streets and addresses. The kids then collected packages from the “delivery station” and had to locate the specific street and location of where to deliver the package to each customer. It was such a fun game where you delivered a certain number of packages and the kids were awarded with a prize at the end. My daughter was 4 at the time and so excited to deliver these Amazon packages all around the building, just like the Amazon Delivery Service Partner drivers that deliver to our homes. My daughter still talks about it till this day!

Another favorite memory is when our teams decorated our office spaces to compete for the best Halloween theme and decor. Halloween is typically very fun and competitive in our offices with some teams building interactive displays hosting games, dressing up in costumes, and building full haunted houses. Then all would invite the kids in to trick-or-treat around the offices.

What accomplishment at Amazon are you most proud of?

I am so proud of building safe driving metrics from the ground up and integrating them into our key performance metrics for the business. When the Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program launched to partner with small-businesses, my team was responsible for designing and launching performance standards to focus on safety, delivery quality, and the customer experience.

We used a 3rd party to calculate safe driving metrics and I always wanted to dig deeper into understanding the math. With the launch of in-vehicle camera safety technology proven to help reduce unsafe behavior in real time by reducing driver-controllable safety incidents, we had the opportunity to design our own metrics from the ground up. Safety of Delivery Service Partner’s (DSP’s) drivers and the communities we collectively serve is the highest priority. We had this incredible opportunity to start from zero and build safe driving metrics that were transparent and easy to understand. I had the opportunity to dive deep into the machine-learning models, work with supportive stakeholders to design closed-loop mechanisms, and shape the data in a way that is easy to understand and more real-time. The results have been incredible! We’ve seen a sizable reduction in accident rates across our network. One of my passions is builder spaces and this was a unique opportunity to create something from the ground-up.

What brings you passion/excitement to your role and team?

I love to measure everything and I'm fiercely competitive and lead with data. One of my self-chosen projects in school was measuring and looking for patterns in data. At the time, I focused on television and had multiple VCR tapes for my manual data collection process. One example of my data obsession lately, is that I keep a log of different routes I take to places like the office, so I can learn which is the fastest. At Amazon, my role and team are focused on improving safety and the experience for our customers. I encourage my team to look for ways to measure new things about the delivery experience and find interesting dimensions to slice the data. I find I understand a situation more deeply if I work to understand how the data is connected to the customer experience. One example of this is in March 2020 during the start of COVID-19, I was leading a task-force for DSP and we were laser-focused on how to adapt our business to support customers. I very quickly designed and built ways to capture new signals which transformed into a suite of new metrics to support our customers during that time. Being a leader and my competitive nature, I try to weave in some fun competitions into the team as well. So far we have done a stair-climbing challenge, built paper maché team mascots at the Amazon Expressions lab, and we are currently counting our steps cumulatively this month to walk from Nashville to Austin.

Tell us a little about the team that you lead?

My team and I obsess about improving safety and the customer delivery experience. We use all kinds of data to help build tools for Delivery Service Partners (DSP) manage their businesses, create mechanisms to improve, and build programmatic solutions. One of our recent projects was to think through how we store our data. We made some changes to our architecture and processes, which reduced latency and enabled us to look at data in more real-time. We’ve been focused this year on breaking down our metrics into individual components in a process to better understand how we can improve for customers. In building my team, I take the approach to look for diverse perspectives. We make a lot of one-way door decisions that scale to the network, so we like brainstorming and debating if we have the right approach, walking through different potential solutions, and ensuring we’re connecting into broader processes in the most effective way. On the team engagement side, my team works hard and plays hard; we’ve had a blast playing whirlyball, Topgolf, and virtual zombie dodge-ball.

What do you like best at working at Amazon?

I love the passion people have to build things for customers and how teams come together to solve problems. If I could describe my experience at Amazon in one word, it would be Opportunity. It ties very closely to the Ownership leadership principle, which is building solutions for the long-term and stepping in when there is no clear owner. I love to solve complex and interesting problems and have always been the most energized in builder spaces. Early in my career, I remember having to fight to be in the room or have a seat at the table to help solve a problem. I remember this one time, in a meeting were 6 people at a tiny table, but the only actual chair to sit was in the corner. I literally elbowed my way to join the actual table and everyone chuckled. From that experience, I convinced my leadership team to include me so I could learn and help. I was just so interested to learn and be part of the conversation to help figure out a solution to the problem. At Amazon, I’ve found that you can easily raise your hand or volunteer to help focus on an interesting problem. On my team, I apply my experiences throughout my career journey. For example, when we’re facing a particularly difficult challenge and an immediate solution is not available, I listen closely to the newest person in the room who might offer a fresh perspective. I’ve also found I can ask anyone for support and teammates are excited to roll up their sleeves to help me find solutions for our customers.

Best place you have ever traveled?

My family and I love spending time in the San Juan Islands, which is at the border of Washington state and Canada. Since moving to Seattle in 2014, we have visited every summer. We have such amazing access to waterways in the Seattle area, and you can travel to the San Juan's by ferry, sea plane, or personal boat. There are so many outdoor activities to enjoy including hiking, kayaking, crabbing, and shopping local vendors in the islands. Our favorite family tradition is to spend the 4th of July at Roche Harbor on San Juan island. There is a multiple day celebration with fun events like a log rolling competition, swimming in the pool, a daily colors ceremony at sunset, and of course fireworks. We typically host a big clam boil, visit Westcott Bay for oysters, and do some of our own crabbing. Every night my family and I have a huge bonfire and make s'mores. We then head over to Sucia Island for a day or two of a more relaxing environment where we explore tide pools, hike around the island, and watch marine life.