Dying is a concept most people wouldn’t voluntarily approach, but Ashley Neville wades right in with open arms.
Neville is a social worker and currently the supervisor of the holistic care team at Whatcom Hospice. This means she’s also in a leadership role, so is no longer working directly with patients and families, something she’d been doing for the past eight years.
“Now, I support this awesome team that includes our social workers, our chaplains, our bereavement program, and our volunteer program,” she says. “Also, we are super lucky at our hospice [to] have integrative therapies with our massage therapist and acupuncturist. That’s my team.”
Whatcom Hospice serves about 230 patients in the community and also runs an in-patient hospice house. “It’s a lot of relational work,” says Neville. “I provide clinical support and clinical supervision for social workers and it’s a lot of protocol and best practices. I love my job and it’s incredibly challenging.”
Neville admits to taking “a weird road” to get to where she is today.
After graduating college, Neville was unsure of the exact career path she wanted to pursue and ended up in Portland, Oregon working as a barista, among other jobs. “Eventually, I went and volunteered over in Africa for a bit, and I got involved in some work there,” she says. “I was at an orphanage, and we needed to vaccinate all the kiddos for hepatitis B. I helped organize a fundraising project to get that going, which, in retrospect, was kind of macrolevel social work.”
Upon her arrival back in the U.S., a friend mentioned social work as something Neville might be interested in pursuing. “That planted the seed,” she says. “It took me a couple of years to get into a program at a master’s level.” She volunteered while working, built up her resume, and eventually got into a two-year master’s program for social work in Boston. “At the time, my focus was on older adults and families. I had a super strong connection with my grandmother, and I love older adults.”
Neville finished grad school and started working in Adult Protective Services, similar to Child Protective Services but for reporting elder abuse and other emergencies in older adults.
“A colleague told me about hospice; that they were hiring, and I should check it out,” says Neville. “I got the job and within a week or two I remember calling my mom and telling her it was incredible, raw, beautiful, real, hard work — and how I had never experienced that before. Very quickly, I knew it was my thing and I’ve been doing it ever since. This is almost year nine of working in hospice.”
Outside of the heroism that is her everyday work, Neville loves to enjoy the gorgeous outdoors. “I’m a true Pacific Northwest person, so if I need to decompress or recharge, I like to do trail running, yoga, and pole dancing — which is really kind of fun,” she says. “I like to move and be in nature. I’m introverted so I like to spend one-on-one time with family, close friends, and my husband, just the usual stuff.”
As for her next move? Neville is in the process of growing her family and solidifying their home in Whatcom County. “My husband and I just got married last year,” she says. “He’s Canadian, and we met during COVID — it’s just been a whole COVID love story. We’re working on the green card process and our hope is for him to be able to actually live down here. We’re pretty excited about that process and at the same time we’ve been trying to, hopefully, start a family here in Bellingham. Professionally, I feel really happy with where I’m at with Whatcom Hospice, growing as a leader. It’s been very challenging but good for me.”
Neville feels truly grateful to be named one of the Top 7 Under 40 for Whatcom Young Professionals and is working to take in the honor. “It feels strange and I’m trying to give myself permission to be proud,” she says. “I feel a sense of imposter syndrome. Getting this recognition, I was in disbelief at first, but I’ve been trying to let myself receive it because I do work really hard.”
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