Wendy Gillespie

President & CEO of Starhawk Productions, Frontier Trading, Capdevilla Gillespie Foundation

As a successful entrepreneur since 1991, Wendy has been a co-owner and is now President & CEO of Frontier Trading, Inc, a binational company exporting to and distributing grocery products in Mexico and Latin America, achieving $180 million in sales in 2005. Previously, she spent 13 years with the IBM Corporation in various sales and marketing management positions, including an assignment at IBM’s Asia Pacific Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. 

With Starhawk Productions, Wendy has found recent success as a NY Broadway producer. Her current production, “Come from Away,” which premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse, received 7 Tony Award nominations. Her first production, “Allegiance: A New American Musical,” made its debut at the Old Globe in 2012, and premiered on Broadway in 2015-16. 

Wendy is also President & CEO of the Capdevilla Gillespie Foundation and is very involved in both the San Diego business and philanthropic communities. She currently serves on several boards including the La Jolla Playhouse, Pacific Arts Movement, National Council for the American Theater, Strategic Roundtable of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, The U.S. District Export Council, and the University of San Diego School of Leadership and Education Sciences and the Montclair State University College of the Arts Advisory Board. 

Wendy received the Distinguished Alumna Award from Montclair State University (NJ) in 2018. She was inducted into the Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame, received the Junior Achievement Worldwide Gold Leadership Award, and has been recognized as a San Diego Woman Who Means Business, Girl Scouts Cool Woman, YWCA TWIN (Tribute to Women in Industry) and in 2016 received the UPAC (Union Pan Asian Communities) Visionary Award, and the JACL (Japanese American Citizens League) Civil Rights Leadership Award for her work with “Allegiance”. 

Wendy has been a dedicated supporter of Junior Achievement San Diego for the past twenty years with fifteen years of service on the Board. Wendy and her husband, Marty Capdevilla, played a key role in finding a new home for the Junior Achievement office, creating the Capdevilla Gillespie Center for Junior Achievement in Mission Valley in 2006. 

Wendy is a charter member of the San Diego Women’s Foundation, and the San Diego World Trade Center, where she served on the Board for 15 years.