- Ashley Ketner owns High Hopes, a tattoo studio in NYC that celebrates the queer community.
- Ketner opened the studio in 2020 while working full-time in a corporate sales job.
Ashley Ketner is the owner of High Hopes Tattoo, a studio in New York City that celebrates queer artists and clients.
During her upbringing in a conservative town just outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina, both the queer community and people with tattoos were underrepresented and misunderstood, Ketner said.
Ketner, 38, told Insider that it was a common misconception among her family and peers that the only people who got tattoos were either in prison or unable to get a real job. It wasn't until she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, for college that she started to see people her own age who were inked. It was also during this time that she started exploring her sexual identity, she said.
Fast-forward to the present day, and Ketner has more than 72 hours' worth of ink on her arm, including a portrait of her grandfather, and other designs on her legs, back, and head, which she said she displays proudly at her full-time corporate sales job. She is also engaged to a woman named Olivia, after previously being a "serial long-term dater of men" during early adulthood, Ketner told Insider.
Speaking to Insider over Zoom, Ketner spoke about her sexuality, tattoos, and how she balances her 9-5 job with running High Hopes.
Ketner is cheering on the queer community with High Hopes
Ketner and Olivia moved from North Carolina to New York in 2019, where High Hopes Tattoo was born. Ketner said she signed the lease for the studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in January 2020, but it didn't officially open until that summer due to the pandemic. Ketner was the first person to be inked in the studio; she had "High Hopes" tattooed across her stomach before the grand opening.
Ketner is committed to making High Hopes as inclusive as possible, and that's apparent through the studio's marketing; the tagline "Queer female owned" is written on both the official website and the studio's Instagram account.
But Ketner wasn't always so vocal about being queer. She said she came out to her family when she was in her 20s, while explaining to them why she'd broken up with her then-boyfriend. She had cheated on him with a woman, she said.
"The idea of me telling them that I was dating a woman was very nerve-wracking. I mean, you know, you lose sleep over it, you lose weight over it," Ketner said.
"I'm a people pleaser," Ketner added. "Anybody that knows me knows that. And so I never wanted to let my family down in a way. But I also knew that, in my mid-twenties, I had wasted enough time not exploring this part of my sexuality."
Ketner said her family was initially concerned, with some asking if she wanted to have children one day, while others asked what their church would think. But ultimately, she said, they became supportive.
She was initially reluctant to show her tattoos during job interviews
Ketner currently works remotely in consumer packages for a North Carolina-based tech company. She said she joined as an account manager in 2016 and hid her arm sleeve tattoo during the job interview, only showing it to her employer after she had been offered the position.
By mid-2017, Ketner had transitioned over to the company's sales department as she felt it'd be more fitting to her competitive and goal-oriented personality, she told Insider. She had purple hair during the interview, but when she came to work the next day with a short blonde bob, her new manager had a surprising reaction.
"He comes up to me, and he's like, 'Hey, why did you dye your hair? I liked it better purple.' And I was like, oh my God, I thought you would like it better blonde," Ketner said.
"He was like, 'No, here's the deal. I always want you to be exactly who you are, but when you have purple hair and tattoos, you have to be the best. You have no room for error because people are immediately gonna think something about you that isn't necessarily true. So you're gonna constantly have to prove somebody wrong,'" Ketner said.
Now, Ketner said she's not afraid to own her individual style and show off her tattoos in the workplace. Sometimes, she said, having tattoos can work to her advantage if she's working with younger clients who also have tattoos.
Ketner's corporate job is drastically different from her tattoo career, but it also gives her an advantage
Ketner said she moved to New York in February 2019 after getting a sales promotion, which allowed her to work remotely while launching High Hopes the following year. It was the money Ketner made after the promotion that allowed her to open up the studio.
"2019 was a great year for me, I made a bunch of money and crushed my sales quota. With that I was able to start the business, renovate the space, and buy all the equipment without having to borrow a dime," Ketner said.
"It was my life's savings, but I knew it was for something bigger," she added.
And while her two careers are completely different, Ketner said they are both beneficial for different things. Running High Hopes is a passion project, she said, while her 9-5 sales job offers security and multiple benefits including health insurance.
"High Hopes is that creative outlet that I wish my day job gave me. It allows me to flex my marketing wings the way that I want to, to do those things that I like so much," Ketner said, adding that she can apply the skills she learned from both her college education and her corporate job to the tattoo studio.
Ketner said her main responsibility at High Hopes involves hiring tattoo artists and recruiting guest artists to come to the studio to "bring a talent and therefore an education to artists at the shop." She said guest artists in particular will be a main focus for her this year, as she'd like to have artists from out of state or different countries visit.
Ketner said the pandemic taught her how to effectively use her time while balancing two jobs.
"Because of the pandemic and us being so used to being behind our screens now, I found myself being much more efficient with my time. So having to be very aware to get up and take a lap around the block, right?" she said.
"I think that being able to turn off this switch and then switch over to High Hopes mode has been a really nice distraction actually, because I can turn off that corporate mind and then turn on that creativity," she added.