Since July, WeAreTechWomen have been searching the UK for the best female tech talent in the country. The TechWomen100 awards, founded in 2015 were the first of their kind to focus solely on women in tech below director level. The awards now have an alumni over 500 incredible women working in tech from a multitude of industries. The awards also recognise the impact of senior champions, global advocates, companies and networks that are supporting women in tech, and who are implementing initiatives to excel the careers of women.
This year we received more than 1,000 nominations over an eight-week period. Our incredible judges shortlisted 200 individuals who were announced across our social media channels in early October. The sharing of their shortlisting resulted in over 5 million visits to the WeAreTechWomen websites and over 30,000 votes of support from across the globe.
The TechWomen100 awards are kindly powered by Barclays and supported by Oliver Wyman, Northern Trust, PwC, Morgan Stanley, Funding Circle, Sky, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, BT, Bank of America, BAE Systems, Clifford Chance, Huawei, and Accenture.
At Barclays, we’re focused on improving gender diversity through a workplace environment and culture that enables our female colleagues to fulfil their career aspirations. For me, as a leader in technology, this means really investing in how we attract, retain and develop our female tech talent. Recognising and celebrating female technologists is fundamental towards closing the gender gap and building a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture across the industry. Barclays has been working with WeAreTechWomen since 2015 because they do a fantastic job of shining a spotlight on female role models in technology, and those who support and empower them to realise their full potential. We want to help promote, support and amplify those voices leading positive change and inspiring others, which is why we’re proud to be the headline sponsor for the 2022 TechWomen100 awards
Our winners will be celebrated at a red carpet event packed with celebration and entertainment at the QEII Centre in London on the 6th December. Find out more here.
This year’s winners include Johanna Waite, Programme Manager of the multi-award winning TechUP initiative, based at Durham University, which trains women from minority groups into tech careers; Isabel Straw, part time Emergency Doctor in the NHS who also completed a PhD in Artificial Intelligence at University College London (UCL), focusing on evaluating discriminatory biases in medical algorithms; Marie Hemingway, Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Speak Out Revolution, a not-for-profit with a mission to cancel the culture of silence on harassment in the workplace; Dayo Akinrinade, who built a social audio app to democratise access to mentorship and create a diverse community centred on knowledge sharing; and Priyanka Gangishetty, Senior Azure Customer Engineer at Microsoft and ambassador for women in STEM.
Our winners are not just recognised at our celebration ceremony, WeAreTechWomen work with a number of partners to support our winners long after the awards conclude. This year’s winners will also benefit from a learning and networking day with our education partners Durham University. This includes the opportunity to learn from a number of Computer Science professors whilst networking with fellow winners. They will also benefit from four career development workshops kindly provided by another one of our awards development partners. All of our winners will also be invited to record personal videos about their career stories that will be distributed through schools via the TechSheCan charity.
Outside of our 100 winners, we also recognise the achievements of a number of individuals through a series of individual and company awards.
WeAreTechWomen’s Network of the Year award has been awarded to Barclays for their incredible internal initiatives to support their women in tech. The Champion of the Year has been awarded to Gemma Willman, Senior Director, Head of Workforce Enablement, Natwest for her passion in driving the gender agenda for women in technology both internally and externally. The Global Achievement award has been awarded to 16 year old Amna Habiba, founder of BloomED for her outstanding efforts to teach 1000’s of girls to code in Pakistan. The company of the year award goes to Finastra for their initiatives to elevate women in technology, and for their inclusive internal policies which help women to feel supported, both in life and their careers.
WeAreTechWomen also awarded their Editor’s Choice award to Flavilla Fongang, Founder of 3 Colours Rule, Founder of Tech London Advocates – Black Women in Tech and curator of “The Voices In The Shadow”, a book that features stories of black women in tech which is distributed to secondary schools for FREE across the UK and Ireland. Flavilla, chosen for the Editor’s Choice award by the leadership team and an independent judge is recognised for her outstanding contribution towards building a pipeline of women in tech and for raising the profiles of black women in the tech industry.
The Lifetime achievement award which recognises outstanding support for women in tech has been awarded to Russ Shaw CBE. Russ is the Creator and Founder of the worldwide network, Global Tech Advocates, which now boasts over 12,000 members and is present in over 17 hubs around the globe. Russ originally founded Tech London Advocates in 2013 to ensure an independent voice of the technology community was heard, but with a focus on the private sector. Since then, he has been championing London as a global tech hub and campaigning to address some of the biggest challenges facing tech companies in the UK.
Russ was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List 2021 for services to technology and to business in London. He is a founding partner of London Tech Week, a London Tech Ambassador for the Mayor of London and Advisory Board member for Founders4Schools and the Government’s Digital Skills Partnership.
Alongside all of his incredible achievements, Russ has been an avid supporter of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the tech industry. He is being recognised for his support and dedication to raising the profile and supporting the aspirations of intersectional women working in technology.
The winner of this year’s public vote is Ekta Soni, Senior Manager, WIPRO, with just over 5,000 global votes.
I would like to extend a huge congratulations to this year’s winners of WeAreTechWomen’s TechWomen100 awards. Women only represent 17% of the tech industry and that figure has remained stagnant for the past eight years. By highlighting these incredible women and all of their achievements we hope to create much needed role models for the future. Women that will pay it forward, create communities, support each other and use their platforms to encourage more women and girls into the industry. My hope is that their companies continue to support their careers by opening doors of opportunity for them to shine. I am delighted that we received over 1,000 nominations this year and that we got the opportunity to showcase 200 incredible women through our shortlist. I am even more delighted that we will get time to spend with our winners both on the 6th December and beyond as we continue to support their careers in 2023. Well done once again and a huge thank you to everyone who nominated, who was nominated, our shortlist, our sponsors, our judges and our cheerleaders.
Once again we would like to extend a huge congratulations to all of our winners and we look forward to working with them over the coming year.
Tickets for our winner’s celebration at the QEII Centre on 6th December can be purchased here.
