Hello there,
My name is Ashley Daniel!
I'm a 22-year-old recent college graduate from small-town North Carolina, now living in New York City with two of my best friends and my cat, Kali. I’m currently balancing life as a waitress and aspiring development and publishing professional, figuring out what it means to build a creative career while still finding meaning in the beautiful, ordinary parts of my twenties.​​​
I’ve always been someone who feels things deeply — “too much,” maybe, but that’s one of my favorite things about myself. I’m a hopeless romantic, a perfectionist with a perpetually messy closet, and the kind of person who finds beauty in the everyday: the ocean, Lana Del Rey, rainy afternoons, cat naps, photo-booth pictures, teen dramas, and lazy Sunday mornings with my roommates. I love Little Women and Vanderpump Rules with equal intensity. I love literature, rom-coms, reality TV, and stories that remind me how human, messy, and wonderful life can be.​
I grew up in North Carolina surrounded by people who valued familiarity and heart. It’s where my mom raised me to love the Tar Heels, where I met my best friend, where I first read Harry Potter under the covers in my childhood bedroom, and where I learned how stories can make a small world feel big. It’s imperfect, but it’s home, and it shaped everything about who I am. Even so, I always wanted to see more: more stories, more feeling, more of the world beyond the one I already knew.
UNC-Chapel Hill felt like the natural next step. My mom’s alma mater had always been familiar, but stepping onto campus as a student felt new, full of possibility. I’d always loved stories — how they can take so many forms and find their way to people through so many vessels — but college gave me the language to understand that love. I double-majored in Journalism (Public Relations) and Communication Studies (Media Production), where I learned how emotion drives connection, how strategy shapes impact, and how the right idea can become something lasting. That creative alchemy is still what drives me today.
I’m always developing feelings about something: the Survivor season I’m rewatching, the book I just finished, a show I’m obsessed with (or annoyed by), a Vogue article that made me think, a new crush, a career high or low, or just the reality of being in your twenties in New York City. ​
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If you want to see the projects and experiences that got me here, you can explore my work below.