Our A Team consists of Ashley, our copy-writer
and blog master, and Anneli, our website designer and maintainer.
Both members of our A Team lead busy lives. Ashley
and Anneli have careers that keep them very busy — sometimes too busy. That
said, they take time from both their work and their precious evenings and
weekends to maintain the website, manage our social media accounts and blog and
design and send our mail-outs.
How does everyone at WELNepal make it work? After we decide the content of a mail-out, I try
my best to assemble coherent sentences. I send the first draft off to Ashley,
who tears it apart and puts it back together in neat and clean English. Sometimes Ashley needs to expand a thought. Sometimes
she needs to shorten piles of messy words into something easily understandable.
You really don’t know how much effort Ashley had to put into this dribble to
make it read coherently!
Once Ashley is finished cleaning up my words,
she sends the copy and any relevant photos off to Anneli. Anneli wrestles both copy and photos into one
of the few templates available for her use. Sometimes we decide that something
isn’t quite right and needs some more tweaking.
That can send poor Anneli back to the drawing board, looking for a
different template to accommodate another photo or an extra sentence.
The really wonderful thing about both Ashley
and Anneli is their professionalism. Both are confident enough in their work to
be able to make those changes when I get finicky without any attitude or hurt
feelings. “If you want me to change
something David, that’s no problem! How’s this?”
Ashley and Anneli, I love you!!
--David Daai
Anneli West
Having
over 20 years experience in the design and advertising field, Anneli started
her career in design studios after graduating from The Ontario College of Art
and Design. She worked with clients ranging from Mirvish Productions, Canadian
Stage, Royal Conservatory of Music, Wellington Brewery, OysterBoy to more
corporate clients, such as Canon, Laurentian Mutual Funds, York University, The Bodyshop
and CIBC.
After
seven years working full-time, she started her own design studio, Four Corners
Communications which she ran for several years, ending with a bit of added
education and traveling.
She
then gravitated to freelancing in the advertising world with contracts at major
agencies throughout the city such as Grip Limited, DraftFCB, Interbrand and Leo
Burnett. In 2005, she went back to working full-time at Direct
Antidote/AIR MILES (now called Squareknot) and is presently working full-time
as a digital/print designer at Venture Communications.
On
a personal note, she was born and raised in Toronto (minus a few years spread among Vancouver, Australia, India and Berlin - probably explains her love of
traveling now). And she lives with her two cats and two roommates in the Little
Portugal area of Toronto.
Ashley
Newport
Ashley Newport is a Toronto-area freelance
writer. After graduating with a professional writing degree from York
University in 2007, she toiled away at a 9-5 before enrolling in the print
journalism program at Sheridan College. Since graduating from Sheridan, she’s
written about food, restaurants, business, trends, news and entertainment. If
you look hard enough, you’ll find her work in Foodservice and Hospitality and
Hotelier magazines, The Home Goods Merchandiser, ichilla.ca and insauga.com —
an online suburban lifestyle magazine with major urban flair that she also edits.
Ashley has been WELNepal’s resident copywriter
and social media maintainer since 2010, and even visited Nepal and the women’s
groups in 2013.
If you need more Ashley in your life (or want
to get in touch with her for writing or editing help and expertise), you can
email her anytime at ashley.newport@gmail.com
