Ana Ward

I've been in the legal industry for 30 years since graduating from law school in 1996. My most notable professional achievement was my time as general counsel with one entrepreneur from 2003 to 2015. During those 12 years, we sold the first company, started a second company, and I raised money to start the third company. The entrepreneur paid for my MBA and for me to get a master's at Johns Hopkins. I was always the general counsel, but I was able to do so much and take on a number of other things. There was a restructuring two years ago at Astellas, where I was working. Since then, I have my own legal clients and I'm doing other stuff, working for myself. I'm licensed in California, New York, Texas, and Massachusetts, and I'm also a registered patent attorney. I would say that my best skill is being a systems integrator and a systems analyst. I look at how different systems come together and how they interface, but also when they don't and when they don't work well. I have lots and lots of different skill sets, but the thing about having lots of them is the ability to put them together and identify where opportunities are for better functionality, whether it's legal and business, legal and regulatory, or compliance and business in any area. At 58 now, I'm about to release a book and I've done all kinds of things in the last couple years that I would have never been able to do if I were working 12 or 14 hours a day.