Monday, August 06, 2012

Anita Borg Change Agent Award Winners Announced

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology today announced the winners of the Change Agent awards. The winners will be be honored at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing later this year.

Anita Borg Change Agent Awards: Dr. Ramalatha Marimuthu, Professor and Head of Department, Kumaraguru College of Technology; Maria Dubovitskaya, pre-doctoral researcher at IBM Research - Zurich and Ph.D. candidate at ETH Zurich; and Evelyn Namara, Program Coordinator at Solar Sister.

I won the Change Agent award in 2009 and it was a wonderful honour and gave me the opportunity to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, which was an exciting and encouraging event for any technical or aspiring technical woman.

The other award announced include the Anita Borg Social Impact Award, which goes to Cathi Rodgveller, Founder and coordinator of IGNITE (Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution) and Nontraditional Career Counselor at Seattle Public Schools.

I had the pleasure to speak at a program organised by the Nigerian chapter of IGNITE. The importance of female mentors cannot be over-emphasised and this meet-up with girls from selected secondary schools confirmed this. The other speaker and I were bombarded with questions.

Visit the Anita Borg website to learn about the other award winners.

The Anita Borg Institute seeks to: 1.) Increase the impact of women on all aspects of technology, and 2.) Increase the positive impact of technology on the world’s women.

No comments: