Here is a moment — familiar to anyone who has built something from nothing — when the question shifts from how do I survive? to how do I help others do this? For Shawn C. Ashman, CEO and Founder of The Art of Motivation Inc., that moment did not arrive quietly. It arrived with a book, a workbook, an international training programme, and an audience of social entrepreneurs across the Caribbean region who were ready to hear exactly what she had learned.
In May 2026, Ashman delivered a landmark Social Entrepreneurship Masterclass for CariFLAGS — a network of LGBTQ+ advocates and community leaders spanning multiple Caribbean nations — introducing the ACE Framework and, alongside it, the dual launch of her two new publications: The Art of Social Enterprise: From Community Challenges to Sustainable Impact and the companion ACE Your Impact Workbook. Together, the session and the books represent something more than a training event it represents her connecting the dots of her life.
Before Shawn Ashman became a social enterprise educator, she spent over two decades navigating the intersections of technology, creativity, and community. With a Master's in Management Information Systems and a BA in Business Administration, she built a career in ICT leadership — and then, deliberately, walked away from the conventional path to build something entirely her own.
That something became The Art of Motivation Inc. (TAMINC), a Kingston-based creative enterprise that now spans visual art, augmented reality experiences, therapeutic arts programming, sip-and-paint workshops, and ICT training through its technology arm, Zoka Tech. At its core is the flagship programme Draw It Out — an initiative Ashman developed from her direct experiences working with youth and marginalized communities, using art as a vehicle for behavioral support, emotional wellness, and self-expression.
TAMINC became the proof of concept. It became the living case study she would one day use to teach others. And it became the foundation for the ACE Framework — a structured methodology for building social enterprises that she has now formalized in print and taken to the international stage.
The Art of Social Enterprise and the ACE Your Impact Workbook are now available — positioned not just as reading material, but as tools for facilitators, trainers, and community leaders who want to run their own ACE-based programming. Ashman has built a replicable system, and she is now putting it in other people's hands.
For the Caribbean region — a geography of extraordinary community resilience, chronic underinvestment, and enormous untapped entrepreneurial capacity — that matters enormously. Shawn C. Ashman is not just writing about a better way to build social enterprises. She has built one. And now she is teaching the world how to do the same.
