Working in silos, change will not occur. WBC convenes with our Partners, Champions, and Sponsors to move faster together toward our action initiative goals.
Join us for WBC's Women's Capital Summit
May 21-22, 2025 • New York
The WBC Women’s Capital Summit aims to provide valuable insights into the world of capital, offering a deep understanding of its dynamics, strategic relevance at different stages of a company’s growth, and the effective utilization of capital resources.
Chairwoman of the Board; Minority Owner, Curio Brands; WNBA Chicago Sky and Fort Lauderdale United
Anne Sempowski Ward is a corporate board director, former CEO, advisor, and investor. She currently serves as a Board Director of SPS Commerce, Vanda Pharmaceuticals, CURiO Brands, and The Lip Bar. She is also an owner of the WNBA Chicago Sky and Fort Lauderdale United FC.
Anne has spent half her 30-year career leading billion-dollar brands and architecting key corporate growth strategies in Fortune 100 corporations. The other half has been focused on building high growth, middle market companies. She is recognized as a well-rounded, astute and transformational leader who guides people, brands and organizations through major growth and cultural change.
In her current role as a Board Director, Anne brings her experience in public and private company governance, building passion brands, developing commercial strategies, and scaling fast-growing companies.
Most recently as CEO of CURiO Brands, Anne more than quadrupled the company’s revenues and profit of the high growth, private-equity backed portfolio of beauty, wellness and home fragrance brands. She led two highly successful founder and private equity exits and two transformative acquisitions.
Prior to CURiO, Anne held key leadership positions at Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Johnson Publishing Company. Over a decade and a half, her experiences were highly strategic and diverse. She worked as a process engineer in a manufacturing plant, led billion-dollar brands, integrated large-scale acquisitions, spearheaded CEO-sponsored growth strategies, and orchestrated turnarounds.
A native of Detroit, Anne is a Duke University graduate receiving both her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and MBA from the Fuqua School of Business. She has been a very active volunteer, voice and leader on various Duke Boards for more than a decade and currently serves on Fuqua’s Board of Visitors. She is also a Trustee at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota’s largest private university.
