Announcing the nominees for VentureBeat’s 5th Annual Women in AI awards

With VentureBeat’s flagship event VB Transform right around the corner, we are excited to announce the nominees for the 5th annual Women in AI Awards.

The winners will be announced during lunch on the main stage of Transform on July 12 in San Francisco. The announcement will also be live-streamed on our homepage VentureBeat.com.

Transform is a two-day in-person event taking place on July 11 and 12. Industry experts and peers will come together to provide comprehensive insights and best practices on enterprise data journeys. As an added bonus, participants will have numerous opportunities to forge meaningful connections and expand their networks.

At the July 12 in-person event at San Francisco’s Marriott Marquis, VentureBeat will recognize and honor women leaders and changemakers in the field of AI. The winners will be in the following categories: Responsibility and Ethics of AI, AI Entrepreneurship, AI Research, AI Mentorship and Rising Star.

The nominees were submitted by the public and winners are chosen by a VentureBeat committee. Winners are selected based on their commitment to the industry, their work to increase inclusivity in the field and their positive influence in the community.

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AI Entrepreneur: Bringing AI out of the lab and into the real world

This award will honor a woman who has started companies showing great promise in AI. Consideration will be given to things like business traction, the technology solution, and impact in the AI space.

• Maria Telleria, cofounder and CTO at Canvas.
• May Wang, CTO of IoT security at Palo Alto Networks.
• Barr Moses, cofounder and CEO at Monte Carlo.
• Kathy Hickey, head of product at Accelerant.
• Mitra Goswami, senior director, data science, at PagerDuty.
• Marcie Apelt, managing VP for AI and machine learning and Innovation Lab at Capital One.
• Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner at Glasswing.
• Deborah Yang, CEO cofounder at Daizy AI.
• Lana Feng, CEO and cofounder at Huma.ai.
• Azul Garza Ramirez, CTO and cofounder Nixtla.
• Vannia Gonzalez, senior manager for machine learning engineering at Capital One.
• Mona Rakibe, CEO and cofounder at Telmai.
• Liz Tsai, CEO and founder at HiOp.

AI Mentorship: Building up the next generation of women in AI

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

• Chenxi Wang, founder and general partner at Rain Capital.
• Priya Vijayarajendran, CTO and head of engineering and security at ASAPP.
• Grishma Jena, data scientist at IBM.
• Marily Nika, AI product lead at Meta.
• Bela Labovich, vice president of engineering at Athena Health.
• Zohra Ladha, senior director of data science at Tredence Inc.
• Penny Li, SVP of very large scale integration (VLSI) at SambaNova Systems.
• Sujatha Sagiraju, CPO at Appen.
• Fathima Minha Farook, professional mentor, game developer, game designer, QA tester and professional gamer at the International Game Developers Association.
• Gabriella Barros, senior member of technical staff at modl.ai.
• Neychelle Fernandes, director for solutions and technical presales at Elucidata.

AI Research: Fueling the next wave of transformative AI

This award will honor a woman who has made a significant impact in an area of research in AI, helping accelerate progress either within her organization, as part of academic research, or impacting AI.

• Karen Myers, lab director for the artificial intelligence center at SRI International.
• Mounia Lalmas-Roelleke, senior director and head of tech research at Spotify.
• Natalia Vassilieva, senior director of product for machine learning at Cerebras Systems.
• Heather Reed, data scientist at ASAPP.
• Himani Agrawal, principal manager for data science at Walmart.
• Divya Saxena, graduate research assistant, PhD student at  Florida International University.
• Lisa Seacat DeLuca, senior director of product and engineering at Unstoppable Domains.
• Fallon Farmer, principal data scientist at  FiscalNote.
• Mariko Wakabayashi, machine learning lead at OpenZeppelin.
• Cindy Xu, senior staff software engineer at Zoox.

Responsibility and Ethics of AI: Thoughtfully building AI that leads to a better and more equitable world

This award will honor a woman who demonstrates exemplary leadership and progress in the growing hot topic of responsible AI.

• Cansu Canca, associate research professor at Northeastern University.
• Carol McCall, chief health analytics officer at ClosedLoop.
• Diya Wynn, senior practice manager at Responsible AI at AWS.
• Rebecca Gorman, CEO at Aligned AI.
• Jane Scowcroft, director of conversational AI, data strategy, at Nvidia.
• Dilek Karasoy, product and marketing director at Picovoice.
• Kavya Pearlman, founder and CEO of XRSI.
• Namrita Mahindro, chief digital officer at Aditya Birla Chemicals.
• Vidhi Chugh, VP at Wells Fargo.
• Amy Okereke, senior director for digital values at Walmart.
• Victoria Vassileva, director of AI performance and responsibility at Arthur.
• Natalie Pierce, chair of employment and labor practice at Gunderson Dettmer.

Rising Star: Honoring women in the early stages of their career who demonstrate that ‘something special’

This award will honor a woman in the beginning stage of her AI career who has demonstrated exemplary leadership traits.

• Mahsa Ghafarianzadeh, engineering manager for behavior prediction at Zoox.
• Ti Zhang, senior manager and data science at Walmart.
• Daria Soboleva, senior machine learning engineer at Cerebras Systems.
• Natalie Abeysena, CEO and cofounder at Shopwise AI.
• Supreet Kaur, AVP at Morgan Stanley.
• Catherine Hansen, director of marketing at Sway AI Inc.
• Cristina Scheau, senior director of engineering at Cruise.
• Kleida Martiro, partner at Glasswing Ventures.
• Kanchan Bahirat, senior computer vision research engineer at Simbe.
• Karolina La Fors, post-doc in responsible design at DesignLab University of Twente.

We’d like to congratulate all of the women who were nominated to receive a Women in AI Award. Thanks to everyone for their nominations and for contributing to the growing awareness of women who are making a significant difference in AI.