The vision Ashley Jones had as the Founder of Love Not Lost came from her personal and heart-breaking story. Having a daughter with a terminal illness, and being gifted portrait sessions, Ashley wanted to pay it forward and started offering free portrait sessions to anyone she met with a terminal diagnosis. As she donated more and more sessions, she realized that something greater was taking shape.
As this shape was forming into a non-profit, Ashley asked three key friends to join her on the board of directors, whom she knew would have not only the talent but more importantly, the heart, to get Love Not Lost off the ground with her. Since then, their board, staff, volunteers, and their collective heart to serve have continued to grow.
Ashley and the team at Love Not Lost are on a mission to revolutionize the way we grieve in America. They started by photographing people facing a terminal diagnosis to capture beautiful memories for those they love. Through their photography program, they give each family a hand-crafted custom-designed photo album with the best photos from their session to enjoy and pass along as a legacy. As they photographed more and more families, they kept hearing similar stories: sometimes they were the only ones showing up. Friends, family, communities were disappearing leaving these people feeling alone, unloved, and abandoned by the ones they thought they could count on for support. As Ashley would speak at events, people would continually come up to her saying things like, “My co-worker just lost a baby, what do I do?” or “My friend’s dad just died, how can I support them?” They saw a community of people who wanted to help and show up for the people they loved who were hurting but they didn’t know how. This inspired them to launch their community support program as well as their corporate care program. You can see some of the Grief & Empathy Tools they’ve created to help equip and empower people to support their loved ones in grief, but there’s more on the way!
Chat Highlights
- Ashley’s backstory of founding Love Not Lost from the tragic loss of her daughter.
- How the fundamental question of “how can we love people better?” influences Ashley’s leadership decisions and her team’s mission.
- How Love Not Lost evolved into providing corporate care programs geared towards helping leaders with grief and empathy tools in the workplace.
- Ways in which leaders can serve their team members when dealing with traumatic events in their lives like grieving loved ones.
Follow/Get In Touch
- Follow Ashley on LinkedIn
- Visit LoveNotLost.org
- Follow Love Not Lost on Instagram
- Visit HowCanILoveYouBetter.com
Our Community Partners
B Local GA: A collection of for-profit companies each dedicated to creating a future where businesses operate as a positive influence on society.
InspirEDU: A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that seeks to support education equity with its commitment to youth and their families, through training, device distribution, and technology career development.
AppBarry: An Atlanta-based software engineering team specializing in building custom web and mobile applications, cloud migrations, and software integrations.
Classic City Consulting: An Atlanta-based WordPress design + development, content writing, and SEO consulting firm.
Stratfield Consulting: Helping organizations successfully adapt to a rapidly changing landscape with an approach that integrates proven consulting, staffing, and recruiting services.
