Announcing nominees for the 2021 Women in AI Awards

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As part of Transform 2021, we’re excited to announce the full list of nominees for the third annual Women in AI Awards. While only a handful will ultimately be chosen as winners across the five categories, we consider all the women below to be the trailblazers and innovators steadily advancing the vital contribution of women in AI.

The Awards are part of VentureBeat’s continuing commitment to supporting diversity and inclusion in AI. This year that commitment includes featuring more women and people of color across the conference content, and in our editorial coverage.

The event kicked off with our Women in AI Breakfast, and is continuing with a number of other talks on inclusion and bias, including one with Margaret Mitchell, a leading AI researcher on responsible AI, as well as with executives from Pinterest, Redfin, Intel, Salesforce, and more.

The women nominated below have all made outstanding contributions in the AI field, from advancing the work in ethics and fairness in AI, to trailblazing research critical to AI innovation, to ensuring young women entering the field have the opportunity and mentorship necessary to thrive.

Finalists and winners will be announced on Friday, July 16th, following the AI Innovation Awards.

If you haven’t yet, register here to see the awards live and participate in the full Transform program.

Find the full list of nominees below, ordered alphabetically by first name.

AI Entrepreneur Award Nominations

This award honors women who have started companies showing great promise in AI. Consideration will be given to things such as business traction, the technology solution offered by the company, and impact in the AI space.

Amandine Flachs, CEO & Co-founder, WildMeta
Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-founder & CPO, Arize AI
Briana Brownell, Founder and CEO, Pure Strategy Inc
Caitlin MacGregor, CEO & Co-founder, Plum.io
Cindy Chin, Co-Founder/COO, CLIPr
Daniela Braga, Founder & CEO, DefinedCrowd
Daria Shapovalova, Founder, DRESSX
Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, Deputy CEO, Smart Eye, Formerly Co-Founder & CEO of Affectiva
Jackie Schafer, CEO, Clearbrief
Julia Markiewicz, COO and Co-Founder, Silent Eight
Karen Chan, Chief Engineering Office and Founder, Wysdom
Laura Hutton, Chief Customer Officer, Quantexa
Leànne Viviers, Co-founder & CEO, Mintor
Liza Nebel, President, COO and Co-Founder, BlueOcean
Marika Roque, COO, KERV Interactive
Nicole Eagan, Chief Strategy and AI Officer, Darktrace
Nurit Cohen Inger, VP of Products, BeyondMinds
Peggy Choi, Founder & CEO, Lynk
Veronica Yurchuk, CTO and Co-founder, Traces
Vesna Prchkovska, CEO, QMENTA
Yinglian Xie, CEO & Co-founder, DataVisor

AI Mentorship Award Nominations

This award will honor leaders who have helped mentor other women in the field of AI, providing guidance and support and/or encouraging more women to enter the field of AI.

Dr. Taniya Mishra, Founder and CEO, SureStart
Duygu Cakmak, Project Technical Director, Creative Assembly
Hamutal Meridor, Venture Partner, Vintage Investment Partners
Ivy Lu, Chief Data Scientist, Oxygen
Katia Walsh, Chief Global Strategy and Artificial Intelligence Officer, Levi Strauss & Co.
Lan Guan, Senior Managing Director, Applied Intelligence, Accenture
Lindsay Hua, Vice President, Global Deployment, Afiniti
Margot Gerritsen, Professor, Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University; Co-Founder and Co-Director, Women in Data Science Worldwide Initiative
Melanie Stütz, CEO, IDEASCANNER
Noelle Silver, Founder, AI Leadership Institute
Suju Rajan, Senior Director of Enterprise AI, LinkedIn
Taniya Mishra, Founder and CEO, SureStart
Weili Dai, Co-Founder and Chairwoman, MeetKai

AI Research Award Nominations

This award will honor those who have made a significant impact in an area of research in AI, helping accelerate progress either within their organization, as part of academic research, or impacting AI approaches in technology in general.

Anjali Dewan, Vice President of Risk Management: Consumer Marketing and Enterprise Personalization Decision Science, American Express
Dalal Buhmeida, Computer Network Administrator, Bahrain polytechnic
Deepti Kalra, SAVP, Insurance Analytics Lead, EXL Service
Dr. Nuria Oliver, Chief Scientific Advisor, Vodafone Institute, Data-Pop Alliance, ELLIS
Gabriella Barros, AI Researcher, Modl.ai
Heather Reed, Customer Data Scientist, ASAPP
Jie Li, Senior Research Scientist, Toyota Research Institute (TRI)
Rama Akkiraju, IBM Fellow, Master Inventor, CTO, AIOps, IBM
Ramya Ramakrishnan, Research Scientist, ASAPP
Vanessa Volz, AI Researcher, Modl.ai
Violeta Jimenez, Digital Strategy Senior Manager, Applied Intelligence, Accenture

Responsibility & Ethics Award Nominations

This award will honors those who demonstrate exemplary leadership and progress in the growing topic of responsible AI.

Aleksandra (Saška) Mojsilovic, IBM Fellow, Head of Foundations of Trustworthy AI, IBM Research, and Co-Director of IBM Science, Social Good, IBM
Aparna Dhinakaran, Chief Product Officer, Arize AI
Asha Saxena, Founder and CEO, Women Leaders in Data and AI (WLDA)
Corinne Powers, VP Data Science / Principal Scientist, Retina AI
Cynthia Holcomb, Founder, FemaleBrain AI
Dalal Buhmeida, Computer Network Administrator, Bahrain polytechnic
Daniela Krispin, VP R&D, Seebo
Haniyeh Mahmoudian, PhD, Global AI Ethicist, DataRobot
Hilary Richters, Director Lead Digital Ethics, Deloitte
Judith Bishop, Senior Director of AI Specialists, Appen
Lavina Ramkissoon, Ms. of R.ai
Ling Hong, Data Scientist, SymphonyRM
Lizzy Feliciano, Chief Marketing Officer, Jvion
Maria Axente, Responsible AI and AI for Social Good Lead, PwC UK
Melissa Swisher, Co-founder & Chief Revenue Officer, Socrates.ai
Merve Hickok, Founder, AIethicist.org & Lighthouse Career Consulting
Natalie Cartwright, Co-founder and COO, Finn AI
Navrina Singh, CEO and Founder, Credo AI and Executive Board Member, Mozilla
Noelle Silver, Founder, AI Leadership Institute
Nurit Cohen Inger, VP of Products, BeyondMinds
Rana El Kaliouby, CEO, Affectiva
Sudha Jamthe, Founder, Business School of AI
Susan An, CEO, SoKat Consulting, LLC
Wendy Gonzalez, CEO, Sama
Ya Xu, VP of Engineering, Head of Data Science, LinkedIn
Yinglian Xie, CEO & Co-founder, DataVisor

Rising Star Award Nominations

This award will honors those in the beginning stages of their AI career who have demonstrated exemplary leadership traits.

Amy Sharif, Head of Data Science Operations, Peak
Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-founder & CPO, Arize AI
Arezou Soltani Panah, Research Fellow of Deakin University, Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute
Berit Hoffmann, Chief Product Officer, Sisu Data
Catherine Bozhenko, Product Manager, DataRobot
Christine Custis, Head of ABOUT ML and Fairness, Transparency, and Accountability, Partnership on AI
Crissi Cupak, VP of Product, Skai
Dalal Buhamida, Computer Network Administrator, Bahrain Polytechnic
Elham Saraee, Director of AI Research, Vizit
Elizabeth Irvine, VP of Marketing, MarketMuse
Iva Vrtaric, Co-Founder, SignalismAI
Ji-Sun Lee (Sunny), Sr. Project Manager Clinc Inc.
Joana Cerejo, Experience Design Lead, Emergn
Karen Beraldo, Director of communications and Partnerships, MKAI
Kavita Ganesan, Founder, Opinosis Analytics
Kerry Chang, Senior Research Scientist, Instabase
Krinza Momin, Jr. Data Scientis, Afiniti
Ling Hong, Data Scientist, SymphonyRM
Marie Duran, Data Solutions Architect, Alkymi
Mary Reagan, Data Scientist, Fiddler AI
Megan Brown, Director of Cognitive Technology, Verint
Melisa Tokmak, GM, Document AI, Scale AI
Nitu Nivedita, Technical Architecture Senior Manager, Applied Intelligence, Accenture
Rikhiya Ghosh, Senior Data Scientist, Alkymi
Vanessa Volz, AI Researcher of Modl.ai

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