Sponsored by

Winner

Tracey Welson-Rossman – TechGirlz

”Driven by her first-hand exposure to a lack of women in technology, Tracey has evolved into a national advocate for bringing and keeping more women in the field. Judges commend her efforts and those of the nonprofit TechGirlz, as they inspire, teach, nurture, and support girls beginning in middle school to ensure they remain passionate, skilled and supported technologists.

Notably, the program has reached more than 20,000 girls.

Tracey is a founding board member of Philadelphia Start-up Leaders and a board member for Creating IT Futures, where she continues to advocate for female technologists. Tracey has demonstrated that she is a champion, a resource, and an evangelist for women in technology. Her goal to fill America’s workforce shortage with trained female technologists to make companies more competitive and women more empowered is inspiring. With the institutional support of Creating IT Futures, Tracey and TechGirlz staff are able to continue to focus on what they know and love – inspiring the future female workforce of tomorrow. We see a bright and more skilled and support young talent base in the industry’s future.”

Shortlist

Netta Jenkins –  Ask Applications & Mosaic Group

Sharon Harvey – NTT DATA Services

Michele Malejki – HP Inc.

Lydia Martin – Reservoir Labs, Inc

Victoria Pelletier – IBM

Alicia Staley – Medidata

Angela Tolliver – Cox Enterprises, Inc.

Diya Wynn – AWS

Sponsored by

Winner

Neha Joshi – Accenture Security

”Neha’s professional, leadership, mentoring, innovation, and personal accomplishments have qualified her to be recognized as the Business Role Model of the Year.

Neha has inspired and has assisted others to perform at their best. She champions innovation in cybersecurity; promotes diversity and inclusion in the workplace; and demonstrates that women can succeed in their professional lives while maintaining balance and devoting time to their family and personal lives. 

Neha is commended on her promotion as the first group innovation officer in Accenture Security. Through her career, she has become known as a change-maker as she continues to raise the bar and achieve new heights. Neha has led major change efforts in the organization, and she led the creation of AI-powered Autonomous Identity.

Neha “walks the talk” in envisioning and harnessing leading technologies and practices to solve real-world business challenges.

Neha also strives to create a more diverse and inclusive industry by being the change she wants to see through public speaking about security; vocal advocacy of women’s initiatives; and transparency about working motherhood (baby in hand and all). Our 2020 judges commend Neha for her passion and drive to advance women’s initiatives and for mentoring many women, as well as men to help bring them along in their careers.”

Shortlist

Jennifer Bonner – Solutions By Design II, LLC

Claudia Franco – Rocket Software

Amy Johnson – dv01

Angela McVeigh – RAI Services Company

Sydney Metzmaker – Pat V. Mack, Inc. (PVM Inc.)

Amy J. Radin – Daily Innovator LLC

Sowmya Rajagopalan – Tata Consultancy Services

Georgina Smallwood – N26 GmbH

Sponsored by

Winner

Mary Kotch – Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd

”Mary Kotch embodies everything the Women in IT Series celebrates. She has demonstrated a passion for technological excellence coupled with a greater passion for developing people and teams. Mary focuses on innovatively shaping approaches to save valuable time and resources and streamlines processes for cost-effective delivery to business partners. She holds multiple technology certifications and in her personal time volunteers with STEM organizations for young adults. Mary is passionate about building up IT talent and working with colleges and universities to enhance their curriculum for technology students. Mary also mentors fellow female technologists to help them attain executive-level positions. 

As Global CIO, Mary is overseeing and standardizing functional delivery for each of the company’s subsidiaries around the world. Each subsidiary CIO reports directly to Mary, and she is creating a cohesive, collaborative global team throughout the IT organization. With her diverse background in technology, application development, product development, and law, Mary is able to strengthen the organization’s strategic market positioning. Mary has the outstanding ability to identify and deliver innovation opportunities to both empower business users and increase market differentiation amongst competitors.

With years of experience managing reinsurance data science/research and portfolio platforms, leading transformational programs and managing complex Global IT Shared Service Centers for PMO, Development, QA and IT Operations, Mary has proved her worth as this year’s CIO of the Year”

Shortlist

Angelic Gibson – AvidXchange

Teri Green-Mason – Lite Technology Solutions.

Karen MacKay – Rolls-Royce

Tenna Piccione – RTI International

Anna Ransley – Heineken USA

Michelle Trupp – Tower Health

Marykay Wells – Pearson

Sponsored by

Winner

Chandra Dandapani – CBRE

”Chandra has transformed a traditional ‘brick and mortar’ real estate company to a smart, tech-enabled, futuristic organization; keeping their clients at the center of everything they do.

She has brought great vision to the table by leveraging data for better optimization, IoT for sustainability, tenant-centric solutions to nurture and maintain lasting relationships, and she plans for scale.

Chandra is tasked with transforming the organization (present in 28 countries, with over 90,000 staff and both commercial and residential properties) as she continues to manage day-to-day organizational needs as well.

She has also led CBRE to become the first company in its industry to fully adopt agile software development across the board with great in-house talent. CBRE has more than doubled its investment in technology and is attracting, developing, and retaining the industry’s top digital talent, in large part due to Chandra’s skills in identifying and attracting top technology professionals.

She has guided her team to create technology roadmaps for every line of business in the company and instituted a ‘Build’, ‘Buy’ or ‘Partner’ strategy for technology investment. Due to her commitment and effort in launching CBRE Vantage, the organization is seeing increasing client win rates by adopting these unique technology tools and insights to separate itself from its competitors. Chandra is a winner for her team, the organisation and is this year’s CTO of the Year!”

Shortlist

Kelly Bell – Gotham City Drupal LLC

Barbara Morgan – FIS Global

Neetu Rajpal – Oscar Health

Pamela Rice – Earnest

Heather Rivers – Mode

Ulku Rowe – Google

Minerva Tantoco – City Strategies LLC

Sponsored by

Winner

Adita Karkera – State of Arkansas, Department of Transformation & Shared Services, Division of Information Systems

”This year’s Data Leader of the Year has over 19 years of experience working with complex heterogeneous data systems for the Arkansas public sector. Often being the only woman in the room has not deterred her passion for continuously facilitating and presenting research on best practices and new technologies for responsible data science. This work adds efficiency and improves the effectiveness of government programs/policies using evidence-based decision making. As the Deputy CDO, she is focused on fostering cross-sector data sharing and data interoperability, developing data-related policies, and coordinates the activities of the state Data & Transparency Panel (DTP).

Adita Karkera constantly focuses on furthering the use of data for better public services and for improving the quality of life for our citizens. She led the Arkansas team to bring together the criminal justice and mental health communities of the state to bridge the gaps in data sharing and integration, to benefit the Crisis Stabilization Units. She is also responsible for creating a unified longitudinal system that links existing silo education and workforce agency information to provide insights into our evolving economy, to the DTP. 

Additionally, in an effort to further data awareness at agency levels, Adita proposed the concept of “Agency Data Officers” (ADO). Today there are over 15 ADOs identified across state government and these ADOs have been brought together to create a State Data Governance Steering Committee focused on creating data sharing policies, a data quality program, and a framework for compliant and secure data integration of data. Adita and the team have clearly been hard at work and she is recognized as an exemplary example of leadership for women in IT and STEM.” 

Shortlist

Jennifer Clevenger – Etsy

Lauren Dillard – Nasdaq

Victoria Gamerman – Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Karen Hyman – Rolls-Royce

Mihaela Nistor – Bloomberg LP

Tiffany Perkins-Munn – BlackRock

Tara Raafat – Mphasis

Barkha Saxena – Poshmark

Aimee Webster – S&P Global

Winner

Melissa Stevens – Fifth Third Bank

”Melissa Stevens is a Chief Digital Officer and has inspired a significantly positive cultural transformation at the 20,000-employee bank. She has achieved revenue growth; increased digital engagement; operation excellence; and improved customer experience. 

The foundation of her focus is to drive customer satisfaction improvements while driving revenue growth and/or efficiencies. She has done this through introducing agile development and building on the bank’s culture of energy and ambition to create a process for innovation. In times of difficulty, as we currently face, judges emphasized the importance in customer/people-focused operations/products/services. Melissa has shown that “you don’t have to be one of the trillionaire banks to be a pioneer in innovation. It’s not about becoming more digital, it’s about making sure we will thrive in the digital world that exists today as well as in the digital world that will be created for tomorrow.” 

Additionally, Melissa works to help women advance and helps them embrace and lead to cultural changes. She mentors, hosts small group meetings, speaks at many women’s events, sponsors leadership program candidates and engages with our Young Professionals and Women’s resource groups.  

Melissa has demonstrated great value and contribution to the firm, her team, and to the industry.”

Shortlist

Falguni Desai – Credit Suisse Securities

Linda Dotts – Blue Prism

Brooke Forbes – Fidelity Investments

Lindsay Lockhart – Neocova

Smitha Murthy – Axtria – Ingenious Insights

Denise Russell Fleming – The Boeing Company

Jessica Wong – American Dream

Lisa Woodley – NTT DATA Services

Sponsored by

Winner

Women Who Succeed – Atos

”The Women Who Succeed Plan is a growing initiative at Atos with a lot of exciting potential. One particular component which stood out to the judges was the Women In Action component where female talent was asked to take action internally and externally to expand their skill sets to prepare for career moves, mentor/coach, share best practices, engage with community groups, and increase their social media contributions to support Atos’ efforts in attracting more women to the organization. The first-ever women’s leadership development program was launched and was the opportunity to “pay it forward” through an Accountability Buddies program. Participants were involved in and led peer coaching circles; hosted monthly tech talks highlighting how women impact the Tech For Good movement; involved community engagement with Girls Code Fun, Girls Who Code, Hope Tech; and had a targeted pen pal program with schools to attract women in sales and to engagement with NTID to build bridges with deaf women in tech. More wonderful ideas and initiatives were highlighted which blew our judges away!

There were very impressive results regarding the creation of inclusive, gender-neutral job postings which led to an increase in women applying to the company within the first 3 months of adoption. Additionally, the development of a return to work employee network showed commitment to ensuring that employees coming back from a career break receive care and attention to ease the transition. There is also important targeted training on for recruiters on the importance of attaining gender balance, for hiring managers on hiring in the age of ageism, and for people managers on removing gender bias from performance feedback.

Congratulations on all your incredible work and this fantastic program – it is one for the industry to watch and learn from.”

Shortlist

Accenture Cybersecurity Forum Women’s Council – Accenture Security

Women in Technology Initiative (Women’s Leadership Network) – T-Mobile

HER Series – Pearson Women in Technology – NC Chapter

Women@eBay, Technology Programs – eBay

SheWorks!

IGNITE – Dow Jones

Colors of Stem – S4 Technology

Unity – IHS Markit

Winner

HP Inc

”HP Inc. has demonstrated that they believe innovation begins with the employees, whose diverse perspectives strengthen businesses. The organization is striving to build an environment where women are empowered to unleash their full potential. They have made great strides in their efforts to hire female talent, with women comprising 37% of their global workforce, 52% of global functions, including legal, finance, HR, marketing and communications, and 22% of IT roles. They have also built one of the most diverse boards of directors in the U.S. tech industry, comprised of 42% women and 58% total minorities. 

HP has demonstrated that their culture is supporting and inspiring women throughout their careers and its diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives, are rooted in the belief that its workforce should reflect the communities HP serves. The organization is recognizing important issues like paid family leave and gender pay equity by providing employees with the flexibility they need to thrive in work and life and they evaluate their pay practices on an annual basis.

HP is also working to strengthen and support its workforce and the industry. The organizations work with a variety of organizations and initiatives such as Black Girls Code; Women Deliver to support Young Leaders programs; and they support Girl Rising, where HP is committing to enable better learning outcomes for 100 million people by 2025. Very impressive work and goals that impressed our 2020 judging panel.”

Shortlist

AvidXchange

T-Mobile

Growth Acceleration Partners

CircleUp

Beyond

IHS Markit

Atos

Sponsored by

Winner

Vicki Mayo – Touchpoint Solution

”The award goes to a truly innovative management tool and tech for good driven entrepreneur. This tool represents the intersection of science and self-help. Vicki Mayo, together with friend and neuropsychologist, Dr. Serin, created TouchPoint Solution which gives people an instant stress-reduction solution. The product reduces stress at the press of a button while also improving sleep, focus, and performance. It has changed people’s lives and will continue to be a valuable tool especially in times like these (the pandemic) where stress, frustration, anxiety, and uncertainty are at an all-time high!

An added bonus for our judges to read was the generosity offered by Vicki and the company. Every month they give away several sets of TouchPoints to people who could not otherwise afford them. When an organization’s mission is to be affordable and accessible for all, we can all rally to support such great initiatives.

Vicki has demonstrated that she is a doer, she will work to get the job done and she is caring and supportive of others. She also continues to encourage and advise all women to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.”

Shortlist

Sahar Arshad – CloudMedx

Kirsten Bay – Cysurance, LLC

Jennifer Bisceglie – Interos

Clare Flynn Levy – Essentia Analytics

Ruby Kandah – CloudX

Suuchi Ramesh – Suuchi Inc.

Winner

CO.LAB – Red Hat

”CO.LAB (presented by Open Source Stories) stood out to our judges as it is a learning experience that introduces young students to the power of collaboration, community, and open source. With the use of open hardware and methodologies, Red Hat’s mentors teach students why being “open” is a better way to work together and a more effective way to solve problems. Since its launch, CO.LAB has shared the principles of open source and collaboration with more than 100 female middle school students in seven cities. 

In just two years, the initiative has grown from one-off events to a global project that has hosted 26 events total and worked with more than 600 students! With this global expansion, the following examples are commended for their creativity and efforts in increasing awareness and practical understanding. In January, CO.LAB hosted its first global experience at Tate Modern, Britain’s national gallery of international modern art in London. Red Hat’s engagement at Tate Modern offered technology access to local youth. Students participated in an all-day session learning a bit about coding, a bit about music, and a lot about open source. 

Additionally, the organization has also now created CO.LAB Alumni Summits, CO.LAB with Customers, and CO.LAB in a Kit. ‘CO.LAB in a Kit’ scales the idea even further as it will enable schools and other companies to deploy the workshop in a shorter timeframe or within a classroom or camp setting.  

Congratulations and thank you for taking ‘tech education’ that much further, for making it accessible and for delivering it in innovative ways.”

Shortlist

Georgia Blockchain Coalition

TechUpWomen – Durham University