Carole Mundell, a professor of Extragalactic Astronomy and head of Astrophysics at the University of Bath, has been named Woman of the Year at this year’s FDM everywoman in Technology Awards ceremony.
Supported by techUK, the annual event seeks to highlight the accomplishments of women working in the tech industry.
Maxine Benson MBE, co-founder of everywoman, said: “We launched these awards six years ago to uncover the women doing amazing things in technology – women who were not necessarily known within their wider business let alone outside their company or the industry.
“By showcasing their talents and achievements, we are demonstrating the diversity of opportunity the industry offers so that more women will be inspired to bring their talents to it. Each year the judges are overwhelmed by the quality of the finalists, and 2016 is no exception; their hard work, determination and positive influence on others is staggering, and we wish them all the best at the awards ceremony next month,” she concluded.
Category winners
Startup Founder Award: Jelena Aleksic, CEO and co-founder of GeneAdviser, a Cambridge-based online marketplace for genetic testing which is set to launch some time this year.
Entrepreneur Award: Lucinda Carney, CEO, Advance Change, set up in 2009 and currently boasting a customer retention rate of 97% and is forecasted to reach £1.3m in turnover within the next three years.
Innovator Award: Tania Boler, founder and CEO of Chiaro, a women-led technology company.
Team Leader Award: Vanessa Hackett, engineering director at American Express, tasked with creating a new software engineering team for the Benefits Management Product. In just a year, her team has delivered a new Benefits Management solution across 22 countries and 30 external bank partners, impacting 400,000 of American Express’ most affluent customers.
Leader Award: Paula Constant, field director at Openreach. Constant leads a field engineering workforce of over 4000 people, delivering a £1.1bn turnover to BT Openreach’s top business and corporate customers.
International Leader Award: Janhavi Rao, head of compliance technology at Barclays. She manages a multi-disciplinary team of over 280 staff, with over 120 permanent employees, based across the globe, in USA, UK, India and Israel, having expanded the team from 100 in just three years.
Inspiration Award: Dr Carol Marsh, electronics design process manager at Finmeccanica Airbourne and Space Systems Division, whose two-pronged role focuses on delivering training courses, assisting with recruitment and development of engineers, whilst ensuring that all complex electronic designs follow a Civil Aviation compliant process, covering over 120 designs in 30 sites across the UK and Italy.
Rising Star Award: Jessica Leigh Jones, engineer at Sony UK Technology.
The One to Watch Award: Yasmin Bay, from Essex, who aged just 14 has already spoken at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University as well as achieving a ‘Highly Commended’ award in the national Astro Pi coding competition.
The award was also given to Nayana Dasgupta, from Sheffield, who has been resolving technical problems in class before the IT technicians arrived since she was 11. She is credited with opening other pupils’ eyes to the enormous range of career possibilities within computer science and technology.
New 2016 category winners:
Digital Star Award: Amanda Follit, head of digital operations services at Amaze LTD. Amanda has introduced innovation into services that traditionally are not innovative – support and process, whilst also training the first consultants in this area, coaching data intelligence staff to look at operational data not just web analytics.
Engineer Award: Emma Thomas, M&E Engineering & Support senior engineer. Emma is credited with delivering two standout projects for Virgin Media, one looking at the life-cycle footprint of the brand’s Super Hub 1 and the second a Pilot Solar PV project.