Anna Bakst is one of our industry’s most successful and inspiring leaders, a truly brilliant force responsible for growing some of fashion and retail’s most iconic global brands. An engineer by training, Anna’s passion for solving problems has been fueled by her innate understanding of innovation, creativity and leadership. From creating and building product lines that have scaled globally, to bringing biotech into the worlds of fashion and beauty, and now building a brand from scratch in a highly sustainable platform, Anna’s unique skillsets have well served the companies she has joined and run, throughout her prolific career. From her early days as Director of Licensing at Donna Karan, to building accessories and footwear for Michael Kors, to becoming the CEO of Kate Spade, Anna’s work has made a huge contribution to helping iconic accessories brands achieve a tremendous success on a global scale - and in the case of Michael Kors - resulting in Wall Street’s biggest public offering in fashion. As someone who is deeply driven by curiosity and an intense passion for learning and doing, Anna has ultimately come back to her roots as a leader, creator, and engineer. In 2021, after being on the board of Modern Meadow for a number of years, Anna was approached by the board to step in and become their CEO. This actually came at a tough time, because Anna had fully formed her vision for her own sustainable approach to fashion, which has now become WE-AR4. But the opportunity to lead this biotech company to the next step and lead the team to proof of concept with commercial applications, was one that she ultimately embraced, and made a significant impact. Today, she is the Executive Chair of Modern Meadow, while simultaneously partnering with one of the best manufacturing groups in the industry, to create her own highly sustainable luxury brand, WEAR-4. In this episode, we discuss not only Anna’s exceptional career journey and the innovative work she’s doing today, but critical lessons she’s learned along the way, her core tenets on leadership and how she has been able to both build and lead large teams, and operate through complexity, rapid growth and the numerous obstacles to innovation throughout her career. Anna is someone who has always had confidence in science, innovation, creativity and the people she works with. She knows what it takes to win, and she has always brought a level of empathy and understanding to her teams, as she knows the hard work and dedication it takes to achieve big things. I am so pleased to share her journey with you, and I hope she inspires you to think about your vision for your own future, and how we all can embrace science and innovation toward a more sustainable future. As always, we hope you enjoy this episode, thank you for joining us In the Studio.