2023 Women of Live: Ashley Foster

Director of Ticketing | C3 Presents

It wasn’t hard to find candidates for this year’s Women of Live honors. The reason is simple, and C3 Presents Director of Ticketing Ashley Foster sums it up perfectly: “Women are effective leaders in the live business. They are making impactful decisions that are changing the industry, and they’re finally being viewed as such.
Women leading in executive roles is becoming the norm and is a great sign of the progress inclusivity has made in our industry.”

Foster feels “very fortunate to work for a company that has always taken inclusivity very seriously. I’m proud to say that 65% of my coworkers at C3 Presents are women. There are invaluable female leaders in nearly every department. I started my career in sports and it was a vastly different percentage in nearly every office I was in. Often, I was the only woman in the front office.”

Foster’s mentor was MLB executive Spec Richardson, whom she met as an intern for a minor league baseball team and who guided her through the early part of her career.

“He wasn’t a traditional mentor; he was 80 years old when I met him. No specific skills were taught, but I learned tough, old ways of thinking in business; how to be scrappy and how to figure things out,” Foster remembers. She says those new to the business try “everything and do it as well as you possibly can. If possible, work in every department, in any capacity, start as early as you can and learn as much as possible. If you understand what another department or someone else is trying to achieve, you’re already ahead of others around you.”

Foster says the main competitor of anyone selling tickets in 2023 is that voice in everyone’s head, whispering “just do nothing.” A vast number of options grapple for attention alongside hundreds of shows on sale every day. The upside, says Foster, “The more shows held, the more opportunities we have to create memorable experiences for our customers. Additionally, every day new technology is developed that we can test and optimize to enhance our operations and the overall event experience. With the volume of events, we are putting on, every event is an opportunity to do better, be better and ultimately be the best.”