Venus Williams Invests in WeWard App to Promote a Healthier World Through Walking
Tennis champion and entrepreneur Venus Williams joins walking app WeWard as an investor and ambassador.
NEW YORK, Feb. 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- WeWard, the free walking app that rewards 20M users for every step, today announced that tennis champion and entrepreneur Venus Williams has joined the company as both an investor and ambassador. This partnership reflects a shared commitment to encouraging healthier and more active lifestyles worldwide.
According to the World Health Organization, 31% of adults and 80% of adolescents do not meet the recommended levels of physical activity. Further, WeWard data shows that Americans walk nearly half as much as they should and rank among the lowest in daily walking activity compared to their developed nation counterparts.
With a shared mission to promote healthier living, Williams and WeWard aim to raise awareness around the dangers of physical inactivity, and highlight the significant health benefits—across cardiovascular health, mental health, metabolism, and energy levels—that come with developing a daily walking routine. Cardiovascular health is particularly top of mind at this time for those celebrating American Heart Month and maintaining New Year's health resolutions for 2025.
As part of the announcement, WeWard debuted a 50-second spot showcasing the tennis champion tracking her steps on the app and later celebrating during a match after hitting her step count goal. In addition to the video campaign, WeWard has pledged to donate $25,000 to support Venus's charity of choice, CARE, which works to address global poverty by supporting economic growth, improved health, access to education, and more for women and communities around the world. The startup will also be hosting a month-long 'Venus Williams Championship' in-app where participants can unlock increasing donation amounts with their collective steps. If the final steps milestone is reached, WeWard will donate a total of $40,000. Starting today, users can also engage in Venus-themed walking challenges and redeem special rewards, including tickets to sporting events, Garmin watches, gift cards, and more.
Williams, who is highly-decorated in both sports and entrepreneurship, has been a longstanding advocate for prioritizing personal wellness both on and off the court. This partnership closely follows the release of her health and wellness book STRIVE, which outlines a holistic and science-backed approach to life improvement.
"As someone who is deeply passionate about personal health and wellness, I'm thrilled to be partnering with WeWard," said Venus Williams. "A large part of staying well and active is simply by moving your body whichever way you can, and with WeWard, walking becomes a fun and rewarding experience. I'm excited to be part of a movement that encourages people to take that first step towards a healthier, more active lifestyle."
Founded in 2019, WeWard is the lifestyle app rewarding 20M users for their daily walking activity, bringing a new kind of gamified approach to exercise motivation. Each day, users can track and redeem their daily steps for incentives like cash deposits, charity donations, or retail gifts, and partake in social challenges, such as leaderboards and collectibles. WeWard users have been shown to increase walking activity by nearly 25%, and to date, the company has given $20M in cash back to users, $1M to charity partners, and helped save more than 600,000 tons of CO2 from walking activity generated.
The partnership with Williams marks a significant milestone for the startup, which expanded to 20 new countries in July of 2024 and recently crossed 1M downloads in the U.S. since its rollout into the region.
"We couldn't have found a better partner to help us inspire more people to walk," said Yves Benchimol. "Venus has been such a huge inspiration to so many throughout her multi-faceted career, and we're thrilled to have her energy, advocacy, and entrepreneurial spirit onboard to help us drive WeWard's mission to get more people walking."
For more information, please visit WeWard's website at https://www.wewardapp.com/
About WeWard
Founded in 2019 by Yves Benchimol, WeWard is a free mobile app designed to make walking a more rewarding part of people's lives. Through gamifying and socializing the step count, the app rewards users for their daily walking activity through incentives such as cash deposits, gift purchases, and charity donations. More than 20M users have signed up to join the platform, which has been shown to increase user walking time by nearly 25%. WeWard is the chosen partner to over 1,500 brands, including household names such as Amazon, Adidas, L'Oreal, Netflix, Nike, Converse, and more. It is available in 29 countries across the globe. To learn more, visit https://www.wewardapp.com/.
About Venus Williams
With 7 Grand Slam titles, 5 Wimbledon championships and 4 Olympic gold medals, tennis champion Venus Williams is one of the most accomplished and inspiring women in the history of sports. Outside of her accomplishments on the court, Venus has parlayed her fine-tuned business acumen with her healthy competitive spirit into numerous successful ventures across the art, design, and wellness spaces, as well as advocacy efforts around equality and mental health. Venus's achievements throughout her legendary career have merited her a plethora of additional accolades, including being honored as Variety's "power of Women", Glamour Magazine's 'Woman of the Year,' CARE Impact Award for Gender Equality, ESPN's 'WTA Player of the Year,' and Forbes' 'Celebrity 100' among others.
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