Ulta Beauty leader Gwen Ward builds presence as a discipline

Influential Women features Ulta Beauty Senior Manager Gwen Ward, whose work focuses on shaping in-store experiences, training teams and turning retail presence into a repeatable skill. Ward also shares her leadership philosophy, career path and advice for women entering the industry.

Why it matters: - Gwen Ward’s role sits at the center of a retail challenge that matters across the industry: making in-store experiences feel human, memorable and worth returning to in a digital-first market. - Her approach links leadership development, guest experience and sales-floor execution into one model. - Ward’s perspective also highlights how retail leaders are training teams hired during and after the pandemic to connect confidently with customers in person.

What happened: - Influential Women featured Gwen Ward, Senior Manager of In-Store Experience and Activations at Ulta Beauty. - The profile focused on Ward’s leadership philosophy, career path and advice for younger women in retail. - Ward described presence as a discipline that can be designed, taught and built in others and in herself. - Ward said her work is about shaping how guests feel the moment they walk through a door. - Ward is based in McKinney, Texas.

The details: - Ward partners with senior field leadership to turn strategy into consistent execution on the sales floor store by store. - Her work centers on whether guests feel seen, whether they leave better than they arrived and whether they return. - Ward said one of her proudest moments was turning an idea into training that people relied on and described as the best they had ever had. - She has held three roles at Ulta Beauty, including Director of Field Services, a role she helped shape as Senior Manager of In-Store Experiences, and her current work connecting guest experience to live in-store eventing and activations. - Ward’s goal is to help stores function as destinations where guests come to have fun, discover and explore repeatedly. - Earlier general and district leadership roles at other major retailers, plus a degree in fashion merchandising and business from Texas State University, helped build her foundation. - Ward said a former assistant manager recently reached out with photos and told her early leadership still shapes his work today. - She also said raising her son after the early loss of her husband remains one of her proudest achievements. - Ward’s leadership values are faith, courage, curiosity, kindness and trust. - She said faith includes belief in God, her own abilities and other people. - She said curiosity keeps her a lifelong student and that she wants to learn from everyone in the room. - Ward told younger women to study the business, understand their strengths, lead from those strengths and pursue leadership for impact rather than title. - Her perspective is that the room does not assign a person’s worth. - She said joy is built from the inside out and called the typical life checklist a receipt, not a destination. - Ward sees the main industry challenge as making brick-and-mortar retail compelling in a digital world.

Between the lines: - Ward’s comments position retail leadership as both operational and emotional work. - The profile frames her career as proof that presence can be practiced, not simply projected. - Her emphasis on faith, trust and curiosity suggests a leadership style built on relationship-building as much as results. - The story also reflects a broader shift in retail: stores must offer experiences that digital channels cannot replicate.

What's next: - Ward said the opportunity ahead is to create in-store experiences that feel consistent, human and worth returning to. - She expects retail teams to keep adapting to more digital-savvy customers while strengthening face-to-face service. - The full profile offers more on Ward’s leadership philosophy and career journey.

The bottom line: - Gwen Ward’s message is simple: in retail, presence is not a personality trait. It is a skill set, and it can be built on purpose.