Morning light slipped through thin curtains, landing on a kitchen table scattered with envelopes.
White meant Ashley and her family survived the month. Yellow meant they hadn’t.
The mail came from the power company, the water department — whoever needed money first.
Thirteen-year-old Ashley Butler didn’t have to open them; she already knew what they said.
Her mother worked double shifts, fighting to keep the lights on, but bills grew faster than paychecks. Responsibility, in that house, didn’t wait for adulthood — it arrived with each notice in the mail.
So, Ashley found her own kind of solution. She cut grass, cleaned houses, folded small bills into her pocket and rode the city bus downtown.
At the counter, she’d slide what she had — not enough to clear the balance, but enough to turn the next envelope back to white.
“I didn’t want her to feel that pressure,” she said. “I didn’t need recognition. I just wanted things to be right.”
That instinct — quiet, steady, practical — would follow her everywhere.
The early lessons
The house in Port Tampa was never quiet for long — gospel radio humming, starch and frying oil drifting from the kitchen.
Ashley was born at MacDill Air Force Base and raised in a tight-knit community centered around her grandmother, Billie Jean — “Nana” to everyone — apron tied, hips swaying, singing over a pot of greens.
“She loves to dance,” Ashley said. “When I went pescatarian in middle school, she made a separate pot of collards just for me.”
That kitchen was the heartbeat of the family — full of music, motion, and lessons disguised as love. The women around her didn’t talk about independence; they lived it.
“My mom used to tell me, ‘Go to school and be somebody,’” Ashley said.
Church on Sundays added structure. “If there was a speech, I had a speech,” she recalled. She learned early that service wasn’t charity — it was a way of showing up.
“If you can learn to be of service,” she said, “you will never worry about money again in your life.”
Becoming Ashley
By middle school, Ashley was coming into her own. She knew how to work, how to read a room — and who she was.
“I told my mom that I was gay,” she said. “Her response was, ‘I know. I was waiting on you to tell me.’”
Her dad’s reaction came in his own language of love — he pulled over his rig, bought Skittles and a Sprite, handed her an AutoTrader and said, “Pick a car.”
Outside the home, it wasn’t as simple. A church elder pinched her arm for wearing pants. A basketball coach made it clear she didn’t belong. She walked away from the team, but not from herself.
Work became her refuge and her proof. She sold produce, cleaned clothes, stocked shelves and even bought vending machines.
“Whatever I was doing, I was going to do it right.”
The lesson was never about the job itself — it was about control. When the world tries to decide who you are, showing up becomes its own declaration.
Choosing her next classroom
When high school ended, Ashley didn’t want to leave Tampa. The University of South Florida offered both challenge and proximity — a chance to grow without losing the people who raised her.
College wasn’t an escape; it was an expansion. She soaked up lessons in management and strategy, translating the same discipline that kept her family’s lights on into a language that made sense in boardrooms.
“When you earn your degree,” she said, “it means you can listen to forty different people tell you forty different ways to do something — and still get it done.”
USF gave her more than a credential. It gave her the vocabulary for what she already knew: leadership is equal parts empathy and execution.
A conversation that changed everything
It started as a joke in line at Panera Bread during her senior year at USF.
Ashley was waiting for lunch when she struck up a conversation with a stranger — the founder of Ice Cold Air. He saw her focus and energy, handed her his number, and assumed she wouldn’t call.
She did — exactly when she said she would.
“He told me, ‘People don’t do what they say they’re going to do.’ I told him, ‘Well, I do.’”
Within months, she was running her first shop on West Hillsborough Avenue — sweeping floors, answering phones, balancing books, learning compressors and diagnostics by printing out Ask Jeeves results and retyping them into her own manuals.
“If you’re going to lead somebody, you have to lead them from within,” she said. “You can’t just lead from the ivory tower.”
Love, partnership and purpose
Under fluorescent lights and the hum of engines, Ashley met Adrien — a nurse who came in for an oil change and kept coming back.
“I didn’t do anything by myself,” Ashley said. “Adrien’s just been phenomenal.”
They became partners in life and in business — Ashley the visionary, Adrien the finisher.
“Ashley can dream it up,” Adrien said. “I make sure we land the plane.”
Ashley Butler and her wife, Adrien, at their Tampa home — partners in life and in business, the pair lead Ice Cold Air with purpose and heart.
Home became headquarters: laughter in the kitchen, notes on napkins, plans on the fridge. “She never lets me forget that I belong here,” Adrien said.
Their love wasn’t separate from the business — it powered it.
The fall that defined the climb
Success came fast — until it didn’t.
“In 2013, I thought I could just flick my wrist and go into a new market where I didn’t speak Spanish,” Ashley said. “I thought I was going to be an overnight success. I think I lost half a million bucks.”
The silence afterward was louder than the loss. Payrolls met, phones slowed, confidence cracked. “That was the best thing — losing that $500,000,” she said. “Money is a tool.”
She went back to basics: documentation, process, communication — the same structure she built from her earliest lessons.
“You can lose $500,000 and still find your way back.”
Building right, not fast
Eighteen years after that Panera conversation, Ashley and Adrien own Ice Cold Air outright. The company supports approximately 100 people and generates more than $12 million annually, with plans to grow to $35 million.
“The first two years it was all infrastructure,” she said. “Now the next 36 months are all training — 100% ASE certified, all stores.”
Her rules are simple: fix what you see, leave it better than you found it, and grow sustainably.
“We’re strategic and we’re not greedy,” she said. “We want the right families, community-oriented people.”
Even a cooling economy doesn’t rattle her. “Let customers save their money,” she said. “Bring your own part — we’ll put it on.”
Leadership, for her, is teaching people how to keep working when the wind shifts.
Giving back what was given
Ashley talks about business the way some people speak about neighborhoods — a living system that works only if everyone participates.
She and Adrien launched the first $25,000 Black Leadership Network endowment in their names at the University of South Florida.
“I want the most impact,” she said. “Something that’s going to outlast me.”
She still remembers the brown Thanksgiving box left by Metropolitan Ministries.
At Ice Cold Air, that spirit became policy: Toys for Tots drives that fill trucks, clothing donations for schools, buckets of soda tabs for Shriners — “three wheelchairs worth so far.”
“That’s the kind of math I care about,” she said.
Legacy
“Legacy means the kids get choices,” Ashley said. “My niece and my nephew will never know what a food-stamp card looks like, if it’s up to me.”
For her, legacy isn’t assets — it’s access. She dreams of teaching budgeting, credit, and first-time homebuying at Hillsborough County’s Skill Center.
“If people have economic stability, they’ll show up in ways you never imagined,” she said. “That’s what we need — more people who can win.”
