Journalism and education have always been competing passions for Ashley Flores, a 2009 Texas State graduate from from south Texas, born in Alice, raised in the Rio Grande Valley.

Now as a teacher and producer, she’s been able to pursue both.

At Texas State, she was the director of Best Buddies and started the campus’ first bilingual tv show, La Bella Vida. She started out wanting to be a journalist telling the stories, but after graduation, she got an alternative certification in education and started teaching.

“I had this passion for storytelling, but being in education gave me a purpose”

Ashley stayed in education for 10 years, even getting her masters. After that decade, she started to experience teacher burnout like many others. To combat this, Ashley started a non-profit that put on events for teachers and attempted to keep them in the field.

When she turned 30, Ashley left teaching and went into consulting and social justice. In 2018, she decided to pivot from education to her original passion of producing . She got into a competitive program at USC and worked at production companies like Hello Sunshine, Nickelodeon, and produced a short film.

“Those are the moments you look back on and realize ‘thats when i decided to change everything’” she said.

Ashley began to create her own community. Her short film, “For Rosa,” blew up in film festivals and was picked up by HBO max. Now, she’s working on a feature inspired by one of the main characters in the short film.

At the same time, she’s come full circle and is now advising students in the producing program at USC.

“I like to think we move into sorts of patterns,” said Ashley.

Alumni Profile: Ashley Flores