Shortlist 2021

Start-Up Founder Award

Tobi Adesanya

Marpe Wellbeing

Tobi is a female GP based in Warwick with special interest in women's health and the founder of Marpe Wellbeing. At a time when people are struggling with stress and depression, Marpe Wellbeing is a digital healthcare platform that helps to improve access to therapy especially in this time of increasing mental health challenges.
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Sallie-Ann Allen

LearnWithVR

Sallie-Ann Allen is an experienced board level HR practitioner who set up her own business after the successful sale of a £10mil+ IT company. Combining her love for helping and developing others, her excellent communication skills and passion for technology to aid development - Learn With VR was the perfect opportunity to create a successful Tech led business to help others develop and grow.
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Genea Lynch

Captivate Reality

Genea worked in the Exhibition Industry where she identified a gap in the marketplace and so created the concept of Captive Reality. Using AR and VR technology Captive Reality deliver exhibition stands that deliver a fantastic experience.
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Gaynor Matthews

myNexus

Gaynor is a serial entrepreneur and investor who developed the myNexus platform, an Entrepreneurial Eco-System. The platform uses game-based assessment to validate entrepreneurial potential.
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Jo Seabright

WM5G

Joanna Seabright is the Marketing Director at WM5G, a company that delivers 5G innovation and growth in the West Midlands. She joined WM5G in 2021 and leads the brand, propositions, and communications strategy. She has over 15 years of experience in marketing, communications, and digital transformation, working with clients such as BBC, HSBC, and Jaguar Land Rover.

Apprentice Award

Shannan O’Neill-Kendall

Watches of Switzerland Group(Aurum Group)

Shannan completed a 2 week placement last year 2020 with zero skills/knowledge in IT. They were so impressed with Shannan's motivation and courage to understand the business and developing her skills we offered her software development apprenticeship programme with Baltic Apprenticeships. She has subsequently had the chance to develop her experience in coding and data management.
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Jessica Morgan

Aston University/Cap Gemini

Jessica is on the Digital Technology Solutions degree apprenticeship with Cap Gemini and Aston University with experience working on projects within the public sector. She is in her final year of her degree apprenticeship and has been able to balance work, studying and volunteering whilst being on track for a first class honours. She is now working in a Platform Engineering role and specialising in technologies such as AWS, terraform and kubernetes.
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Helen Graffham

Jaguar Land Rover

Helen's apprenticeship at JLR has seen her placed in teams that work and implement vehicle safety features over the last few years. She has also been a mentor to new apprentice, supporting them with coding and CAD skills as required. She studied Applied Engineering at Warwick University.
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Bethany Smith

Handsam Ltd

Bethany is a Junior Programmer at Handsam Ltd. She is responsible for daily system checks to ensure users have access to our company systems. Server backups which include twice weekly database and file backups. Maintaining and improving systems on back-end and front-end with new features and fixing bugs users encounter.
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Amelia Westbury

Jaguar Land Rover

Amelia's apprentership at JLR has seen her work as a Battery Modelling Engineer which is part of the future of automative. She sits on the Student Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC) at WMG as well as Apprentice Lead for JLR Early Careers Hub, focusing on the wellbeing of Apprentices across the company and improving the schemes provided.
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Rising Star Award

Rekha Karthikeyan

Jaguar Land Rover

Rekha has been with JLR for nearly 5 years now, working in a variety of process improvement and quality assurance roles. She joined JLR as a Quality Assurance Engineer, she is a now a senior part of the Off Cycle Lead Certification team.
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Nina Ma

PwC

Nina is a Technology, Data & Analytics (TDA) Senior Associate at PwC. As a Data Analytics SME on various engagements for clients ranging across multiple industries, including IT Service Management Optimisation, Order to Cash Process Streamlining and Strategic Sales Analysis. She is the PwC Midlands People Network Coordinator, part of the Gender Balance Network and Women in TDA, promoting gender equality at the workplace and in the technology industry.
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Grace Barata

Santander

Grace works as a Product Designer in the Santander Innovation Hub where she helps to optimise the User Experience of Santander application users. Previously she worked in the charity and education sectors supporting social projects.
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Mante Balzaraviciute

DRPG

Mante joined DRPG part time whilst also completing her Computing Degree at Worcester University. On graduation she joined DRPG on a permanent basis and now manages projects for clients including JLR and Worcestor Bosch.
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Safina Begum

NTT DATA UK

Safina joined NTT Data as a junior application consultant and now 10 years later is a respected name in Service Delivery and Operations Management with NTT Data customers. She now manages a team of 100 and runs 6 different departments and is an Associate Director.
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Academic Award

Burcu Can

University of Wolverhampton

"Dr Burcu Can completed her PhD at the Department of Computer Science, University of York in 2011 after which she held positions in institutions around the world, before joining the University of Wolverhampton in July 2020. As a reader in Computational Linguistics, her key responsibilities include research, teaching and organising seminars. She has more than 10 journal publications in prestigious journals and around 30 conference publications, including one best-paper award. She has been serving in the programme committees in many conferences and has been in the editorial board in two journals."
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Alicia El Haj

University of Birmingham

Alicia El Haj is the Interdisciplinary Professor of Cell Engineering at the Healthcare Technologies Institute at the University of Birmingham. She is a leading figure in Bioengineering and Regenerative Medicine and has been involved in bringing together interdisciplinary groups within biomedicine, physical sciences and engineering.
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Sarah Jones

De Montfort University

Sarah is the Deputy Dean at DeMontford University and her work focusses on future thinking of education, media and technology. Sarah is one of the global leaders in immersive and virtual realities. She has won global recognition for her work and advised the UK Government on immersive technologies. One of Sarah’s biggest drivers is access to and enabling greater use of the technology, especially within diverse groups and communities. She regularly speaks at events targeting women in STEM and established a network for women in VR in 2016.
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Lucy Bastin

Aston University

Lucy has a masters in GIS and a PhD in Urban Ecology, she is currently the Senior Lecturer at Aston University in Computer Science. Recently, on secondment to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, she developed web-based biodiversity information systems that support accessible and user-friendly reporting by the international community against policy and conservation targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
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Reham Badawy

Aston University

Reham is part of the Undergraduate Teaching Team at Aston University. Her research work has used smart tech to detect and monitor symptoms of Parkinson's disease. She is a strong advocate for women in STEM and a UK Ambassador for Women are Boring.
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Tech for Good Award

Pauline Roche

RnR Organisation

Pauline Roche is an award-winning producer, journalist, relationship broker and networker, increasing the digital and data literacy of small organisations in the voluntary, community & social enterprise sectors, including by publishing a monthly e-bulletin Digital WM News and producing/co-presenting a weekly digital literacy show on YouTube.
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Oyinkansola Adebayo

Niyo Enterprise

Oyinkansola runs a multi-faceted organization called Niyo enterprise, a company that specializes in using creative tools such as hair, beauty, tech and community development to economically empower black women. She is currently empowering 70 black women to become full stack developers through the “black codher” bootcamp project as well as the ""black disruptor XR bootcamp"", one of the projects under Niyo network.
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Helen Routledge

Totem Learning Ltd

Helen played a key role in actually creating the serious game and gamification industry we see today. She was a founding member of Totem Learning and in 2017 stepped up to the CEO role. She is a passionate believer that tech can be used to build empathy and to build confidence around mental health conversations. To that end Helen and her team have been developing a game for the NHS to build confidence for mental health conversations.
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Ewa Truchanowicz

Dignio

Dr Ewa Truchanowicz is the MD of Dignio UK, whose focus is to improve the quality of life by disrupting the healthcare sector with our patient-centric platform for connected care. Ewa is a published scientist, business leader and a parent. She was previously the Life Sciences Lead for the West Midlands Region and ensured that Biohub Birmingham became an internationally recognised brand for supporting early stage companies.
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Aaishah Khan

Code Your Future

Aaishah Khan is a Programme Manager at CodeYourFuture, a social enterprise that offer web development courses to people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
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Innovator Award

Stacey Ryan

Oxbridge

Stacey is a Director at Oxbridge, an award winning EdTech company based here in the West Midlands. She has played a key role in the growth of Oxbridge reaching more than 40,000 people with their distance learning through their revolutionary online platform.
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Sophie Thompson

Virtual Speech

Sophie started Virtual Speech when she was still at University and within 6 months of launching had had 100,000 downloads. In 2017 Virtual Speech was part of an incubator in Silicon Valley. In her day to day role Sophie heads up business development and has introduced VR training into the like of Vodafone, Deutche Telecom, Moodys, and Stanford Business School.
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Nosheen Rehman

JLR

Nosheen is a Connected Infotainment Programme Manager in JLR’s Connected Car team. She is responsible for a large portfolio covering 2 distinct business areas of 20+ workstreams/projects. She works with a team of Project Managers, Product Owners, Developers, Testers and Architects to deliver key in vehicle features for vehicle programmes. She has also led the delivery of features to improve Customer Experience e.g. Single Sign On and Generate Revenue e.g. eCommerce Subscription Renewal Launch.
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Cliona Kelly

Aston University

Clíona has a masters in cognitive neuroscience and works with VR and EEG to investigate psychology questions. She is an advocate to diversify science and technology through outreach programmes within her university and outside with initiatives like Black In Neuro (www.blackinneuro.com/), helping students of all ages and levels (high school to PhD) to focus for an hour of independent study during this period of national and international lockdowns.
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Claire Owen

DronePrep Ltd

Claire Co-Founded Drone-Prep in 2020, having previously launched Loop, a data-driven CRM web-app. She is a developer with a solid technical understanding as well as extensive experience in the land/property sector, making her a respected name in the Property-Tech sector.
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Best Digital Lead Award

Sharon Boyd

MKL CX Ltd

Sharon is the Chief Customer Officer for the Tech business. She has led several large transformation Programmes - such as a digital tech one for Argos (digitalising legacy stores - paper catalogues to iPads, and contactless payments on kiosks) , and for easyJet operations (adding tech inside the cockpit and cabin - such as new payment devices).
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Sarah Windrum

Emerald Group Ltd

Sarah has more than 10 years in Tech roles, whilst at the same time finding the time to advise and support others. Sarah's involvement with Coventry and Warwickshire LEP began in 2015. Since 2017, Sarah has also been heavily involved with the WM Combined Authority in a variety of ways since 2017. Sarah has also been a member of both the WMCA Innovation Board and the Strategic Economic Board.
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Naomi Nash

Tech Nation

Naomi Nash is the Midlands Entrepreneur Engagement Manager at Tech Nation, finding and supporting digital tech founders from across the entire region through gaining ongoing knowledge of everyone and everything in the tech community. She is also the Diversity Lead for Birmingham Tech and has launched and leads a scaling leaders peer group and a Women in Tech networking group during lockdown to help people connect.
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Marlen von Roth

SUSE Software Solutions

Marlen is a passionate and diverse leader who works with clients on developing cloud based digital strategies to meet the demands of the modern world. She is also an advocate for STEM initiatives and was recently named by Computer Weekly as Transformation Leader of the Year.

Jane Ellis

Jaguar Land Rover

Jane has over 20 years of IT experience, leading all phases of diverse technology projects and programmes; Merger Transition, IT Integration, IT infrastructure and software development including bespoke software, SAP and SAS. With multi sector experience, she has managed large project teams and am known for high-quality deliverables that meet or exceed targets. She has worked for JLR for 8 years, I have spent this time first working on a major programme leading up the Integration Team and now as the Integration Product Manager for JLR Globally.
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Shining Star Award

Victoria Masso

Behaviour Hackers

Victoria created Behaviour Hackers to fill that gap and build bridges between technological advancements and human interactions, to optimize their resources and boost human talent. Victoria’s background in engineering makes her approach unique. She uses behavioral science and turns it into practical executive training for organizations around the globe, providing organizations with the tools to create more impact using fewer resources.
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Rav Bumbra

Cajigo

Rav Bumbra is an entrepreneur, diversity consultant, advisor to organisations and award-winning diversity champion. She is a strong advocate for diversity and through Structur3dpeople and Cajigo she is working to close the gender gap.
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Liz Walker

Goldman Sachs

Liz Walker is the head of Consumer Engineering within Goldman Sachs in Birmingham, a superstar engineer and role model. She is constantly innovating in her day job as an engineer and plays a very active role in supporting women in engineering both with GS and externally.
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Archana Sharma

OpenText

Archana has worked in a range of roles including content & Data Management, Product & Technology Architectures and Cloud Computing over the last 15 years. She currently the Lead Enterprise Architect at OpenText.
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Anamika Bhargava

Jaguar Land Rover

Anamika joined Jaguar Land Rover in 2015 as an SAP Service Manager. She has been instrumental in ensuring the projects in her portfolio are set to succeed and consistently delivers IT services to a high standard. She has a total of 14 years of experience within the Utility and Manufacturing industries.
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