Featured Speaker:
Anne Simmons-Benton
Executive Director, Arizona State University International Development
Anne Simmons-Benton is currently the executive director of Arizona State University’s International Development office located in Washington, D.C., and leads the strategy and business development for ASU’s international engagement. There she is able to leverage and connect the knowledge from ASU experts in education, climate change, gender, supply chains, water and sustainability to help solve complex global problems.
Anne has been a licensed attorney since 1984 and holds a J.D. from the Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., a Change Management Advance Practitioner Certificate from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and a bachelor of science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Anne’s career includes international experience in commercial law, trade, banking, business development, competitiveness, investment, entrepreneurship and regional development with a consistent focus on gender throughout her experiences.
Prior to joining ASU, she was the project director of the $46 million USAID/Jordan Competitiveness Program, which focused on clean energy, information and communications technology (ICT) and medical services. Anne started the first Girls in Tech Chapter, which included gender for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa ICT Forum and advocated for an angel network to finance women’s enterprises.
Anne managed and led the trade portfolio for Booz Allen Hamilton’s Foreign Affairs Business. There, she conducted assessments of countries’ business environments and created the first diagnostic tool to assess the business-enabling environment for women with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding. She conducted gender analyses in Rwanda, Vietnam, Jordan, West Bank and Uganda. In Vietnam, she demonstrated the link between economic growth and human trafficking.
Anne has also worked for the USAID as a senior trade advisor, the U.S. Department of Commerce as senior counsel and has also served at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.
She is married and has three adult children.