Ashley Cecil Paulisick is a Program Officer for the Arts, The Heinz Awards at The Heinz Awards. She possess expertise in fundraising, art, social media, nonprofits, event planning and 33 more skills. Colleagues describe her as "Ashley worked closely with me during her residency at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I was able to describe to her my ongoing research into bird-window collisions, and how to protect birds from this threat. Using this as a springboard, she developed several beautiful pieces of artwork that featured the species of bird found most often as a victim of a bird-window collision in south-western Pennsylvania. These artworks were then turned into numerous commercial products, and ultimately resulted in the development of 2 beautiful window films, that when applied to the outside of a window, help to reduce the likelihood that a bird would collide with the window. These window films have become commercially available and have been purchased and applied to several residences in the Pittsburgh area. Please visit this link to view and purchase the window films for yourself! https://www.decorativefilm.com/ashley-cecil-bird-safety " and "I was very excited to work with Ashley Cecil in developing her residency at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History during 2016 - 2017. We secured funding from the Fine Foundation for Ashley's residency. The project, as with all of Ashley's work, was both exciting and quite ambitious. The primary basis involved engagement with quite a number of the museum's 54 scientific staff, and familiarization with our collection of approximately 22 million specimens and artifacts. Ashley settled largely on the museum's collection of more than 200,000 bird specimens and on the avian conservation research program at the museum's field research and education facility in the Laurel Highlands, Powdermill Nature Reserve. The museum's bird scientists had just gained funding to establish an alliance of bird-centered organizations in Pittsburgh, and to establish the Bird Safe Pittsburgh program. Ashley created a very compelling series of artworks that used these initiatives as a launching point. Her series of works depicting beautiful birds of western PA that have been the victims of window collisions were not only successful as gorgeous works of art, but served as a very effective tool for advertising the Bird Safe Pittsburgh program, and for recruiting citizen participation. Ashley gathered poems and quotes about birds and decorated our bird display cases with painting on the glass of bird motifs and the poems and quotes. I took special delight in this intervention in the otherwise staid displays. Ashley has a superbly graceful hand and her work, as a consequence, draws one in. Ashley is also a very effective and clever marketer. In addition to the paintings, many of which sold during her show at Boxheart Gallery this past winter, Ashley produced a line of scarves (my mother wears one constantly; my wife wears one often), and coloring books. Two larger scale products are the most compelling. Ashley produced a wall of coloring wallpaper that was installed in the museum, next to which we mounted trays of colored markers. Children and adults alike delighted in coloring in the birds, resulting in frequent replacement of the paper. The most effective product of all is the transformation of her artwork into window applications that are both beautiful and effective in deterring birds from window collisions. Ashley also engaged young children in art-making during the museum's summer camps. As if all of that was not enough, Ashley also added artwork of nursing mammals to the interior walls of our award-winning mother's nursing area in the Discovery Base Camp of the museum. So much amazing and effective work in such a short time! I felt exhausted just observing her! Ashley's contemplative eye, turned deeply toward the natural world, her practiced and graceful hand with ink and pallette, and her deep passion for trees, birds, and natural life in general, has produced some stunning work that lives in both art about ideas and the decorative arts. As a result,"