With VentureBeat’s flagship event, VB Transform, just around the corner, we are excited to announce the nominees for the 6th annual Women in AI Awards. The winners will be announced during a special program on the main stage of Transform on July 10 at 4 p.m. in San Francisco. 

VB Transform is a premier three-day event taking place from July 9-11 at the Terra Gallery in San Francisco. Industry experts and peers will gather to provide comprehensive insights and best practices on enterprise data journeys, driven by case studies from leaders in the field. Attendees will have numerous opportunities to forge meaningful connections and expand their networks.

As part of this event, VentureBeat will honor women leaders and changemakers in AI during the in-person sessions. The award categories include Responsibility and Ethics of AI, AI Entrepreneurship, AI Research, AI Mentorship and Rising Star.

The public submitted the nominees, and a VentureBeat committee chose winners. The selection criteria include the nominees' commitment to the industry, efforts to increase inclusivity in the field and their positive influence on the community. 

"This is our 6th Annual Women in AI Awards at VB Transform. We launched this in 2019, within the first year I joined VentureBeat, and I've seen the evolution of how AI was making an impact then, and where we are now. According to the Global Gender Gap Report of 2023, there are only 30% women currently working in AI. Now more than ever, the people behind this technology are the most important element. We need to ensure we have diverse teams building, testing, and using it in order  to create a more fair and ethical output.

Investing in women in AI will create more valuable AI that better suits audiences, and boosts ROI for companies. The impact has never been more clear, or more important, and we're proud to recognize leaders in AI who are making an impact.

It's imperative we spotlight women leaders in tech. Together we can make an impact together on the future of AI and the people behind it."

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.

  • Bhavani Vangala, VP of Engineering at Onymos

  • Nicole Königstein, Chief AI Officer, Head of AI and Quant Research at quantmate

  • Jenny Dearing, co-founder + CEO at 1337

  • Dani Grant, co-founder and CEO at Jam

  • Iya Khalil, VP and Head of Data, AI and Genome Sciences at Merck

  • Joan Palmiter Bajorek, Dr at Clarity AI

  • Sneha Roy, co-founder & COO at Murf AI

  • Erin Rapacki, AI Robotics Leader at Nvidia

  • Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures

  • Kellye Kamp, Founder at Source Kamp

  • Christina Lopes, CEO and Founder at FidoCure

  • Allie K. Miller, Fortune 500 AI Advisor and Angel Investor at Allie K. Miller

  • Inna Tokarev Sela, Founder and CEO at illumex

  • Marguerite deCourcelle, Chief Executive Officer at Blockade Labs

  • Sarika Garg, co-founder & CEO at CacheFlow

  • Shelby Austin, CEO & co-founder at Arteria AI

  • Charlene Putney, COO at Write with LAIKA

  • Romy Rodriguez-Ravines, Head of Research and AI Modeling Strategies at DeNexus

  • Debbie Yu, co-founder and Board member, ISEE

  • Barr Moses, CEO & co-founder at Monte Carlo

  • Fariha Shah, CEO & Founder at Cominty

  • Meghan Joyce, Chief Executive Officer at Duckbill

  • Ruth Poliakine Baruchi, Founder and CEO at MyndYou

  • Angela Hood, Founder & CEO at ThisWay Global

  • Sarah Buchner, CEO & Founder at Trunk Tools

  • Deidre Paknad, co-founder & CEO at Workboard

  • Arina Curtis, CEO and co-founder at DataGPT

  • Val Vacante, VP, Solutions Innovation at Dentsu

  • Maryrose Lyons, Founder at Ai institute

  • Sheyda Demooei, co-founder, Chief Technology Officer at ViralMoment

  • Megan Gray, CEO at Moment.AI

  • Andrea Constantinof, Director, AI & Data Science at OpenText

  • Rehgan Avon, co-founder & CEO: AlignAI, Founder: Women in Analytics (WIA) at AlignAI & Women in Analytics (WIA)

  • Shelmina Babai Abji, Founder and CEO, ShowYourWorth.ai at ShowYourWorth.ai

  • Alisa Miller, CEO and co-founder of Pluralytics AI at Pluralytics AI

  • Surbhi Rathore, CEO & co-founder at Symbl.ai

  • Nicole Eagan, Chief Strategy Officer & AI Officer at Darktrace

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.

  • Suruchi Shah, Engineering Manager, Model Serving Team at LinkedIn

  • Parul Bhandari, Global Head Media & telco partner strategy at Microsoft

  • Molly-Anna MaQuirl, Founder at AI Atlas

  • Lisa Graham, CEO at Seeq

  • Allie K. Miller, Fortune 500 AI Advisor and Angel Investor at Allie K. Miller

  • Anjali Dewan, Vice President, Consumer & Merchant Marketing and Enterprise Personalization Decision Science at American Express

  • Julie Shin Choi, CMO and SVP at Cerebras Systems

  • Irena Grabovitch-Zuyev, Staff Applied Scientist at PagerDuty

  • Laura Grant, Vice President, Product Development - Global New Product Development, AI & Analytics at American Express

  • Ouafae KARIM, Ouafae Karim at AFRICA-EO-SERVICES (AFEOS)

  • Penny Li, Senior Vice President of Engineering at SambaNova Systems

  • Rebecca Evanhoe, Design Lead at Slang.ai

  • Elizabeth Mashal, Senior Director, Software Engineering at Standard AI

  • Elif Albuz, Sr. Director of Software Engineering at Cerebras Systems

  • Kris Kashtanova, AI Creative Evangelist at Adobe

  • Rima Safari, Insurance Sector GenAI Lead at PwC

  • Reut Lazo, Founder at Women And AI

  • Andrea Constantinof, Director, AI and Data Science at OpenText

  • Nicole Carignan, VP of Strategic Cyber AI at Darktrace

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.

  • Alicia Shapiro, CMO at AiNews.com

  • Angie Aramayo, Technical Product Manager at IBM

  • Payel Das, Principal Research Scientist and Manager at IBM Research - T.J. Watson Research Center

  • Suma Kumaraswamy, Head of Experimentation Platform, Fintech, Patents & Innovation at Barclays

  • Kate Janssen, Lead Product Manager - Machine Learning and Chat at Cleo

  • Ann Irvine, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Resilience

  • Eirini Kalliamvakou at GitHub

  • Divya Saxena, Graduate Research Assistant at Florida International University

  • Jordan Harrod, Ph.D. Candidate, NSF Fellow at Harvard + MIT at AI Educator on YouTube

  • Pallavi Tiwari, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Radiology, Biomedical Engineering, Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

  • Natalia Vassilieva, VP and Field CTO, Machine Learning at Cerebras Systems

  • Joyce Mueller, Director of Retail Solutions at SADA, An Insight company

  • Sujata Saini, at Tokyo Metropolitan University

  • Hannaneh Hajishirzi, Senior Director of NLP at AI2; Torode Family Associate Professor in the Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington at Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2); and University of Washington

  • Sanaz Sheikhi, System Formal Methods Engineer at PassiveLogic

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.

  • Diana Kelley, CISO at Protect AI

  • Parul Bhandari, DIR BUS STRATEGY at Microsoft Corporation

  • Pamela Gupta, Founder  & CEO Trusted AI at Trusted AI

  • Karen Myers, Vice President of AI Center at SRI

  • Helen Gu, Founder and CEO, InsightFinder at InsightFinder, Inc.

  • Agnes Peng, co-founder and COO at GliaCloud Co., Ltd.

  • Maria Amelie, CEO at Factiverse AI

  • Elizabeth Samara-Rubio, Chief Business Officer at SiMa.ai

  • Katie Gardner, Partner, Strategic Transactions and Licensing group at Gunderson Dettmer

  • Sarah Bird, Chief Product Officer of Responsible AI at Microsoft

  • Nastasha Crampton, Chief Responsible AI Officer at Microsoft

  • Rebecca Qian, co-founder & CTO at Patronus.ai

  • Shelley McKinley, Chief Legal Officer at GitHub

  • Joy Buolamwini, President at The Algorithmic Justice League

  • Susannah Shattuck, Head of Product at Credo AI

  • Matar Haller, VP of Data and AI at ActiveFence

  • Vidhi Chugh, Chief AI Officer at All About Scale

  • Yi Chu, Vice President, AI Research & Development at American Express

  • Dr. Sarah Benson-Konforty, Board member at The Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAIH)

  • Jing Huang, Vice President, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at SurveyMonkey

  • Bhavani Amirthalingam, EVP, Chief Customer & Technology Officer at Ameren, World Wide Technology, Core and Main, Schneider Electric

  • Rocio Belfiore, Chief Innovation Officer at BairesDev

  • Rebecca Finlay, CEO at Partnership on AI

  • Lindsay Richman, co-founder at Innerverse

  • Rebecca Finlay, CEO at Partnership on AI

  • Priya Shivakumar, Chief Operating Officer at Lightning AI

  • Bhavani Vangala, Vice President of Engineering at Onymos

  • Lucy Orr-Ewing, Chief of Staff and Head of Policy at Coalition for Health AI

  • Alice Xiang, Global Head of AI Ethics and Lead Research Scientist at Sony Group Corporation and Sony AI

  • Oita Coleman, Senior Advisor at Open Voice Trustmark

  • Raffaella Ieva, Maestro Artigiano at La Favola Incantata - Marchio Artigiano.

  • Rhiana Spring, Founder and CEO at Spring ACT - Action. Compassion. Technology.

  • Kathy Leake, Founder, Forum Ventures at Forum Ventures

  • Fei-Fei Li, Professor at Stanford University

  • Dilek Karasoy, Product Director at PicoVoice

  • Ilana Golbin-Blumenfeld, Director at PwC

  • Jennifer Kosar, US Trust and Transparency Solutions Leader at PwC

  • Jackie Snow, Freelance Journalist at self-employed

  • Sophie Lebrecht, Chief Operating Officer at Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)

  • Sarah Franklin, CEO at Lattice

  • Deiva Saranya Mandadi, Senior Manager Software Engineering at Walmart Global Tech

  • Sumana Rao, Co-CEO and Board member, Sahas Foundation;  at Sahas Foundation

  • Anju Gupta, VP of AI at Northwestern Mutual

  • Rebecca Ryakitimbo, Mrs at Core23lab/KsGEN

  • Sabrina Hsueh, Ethical AI and External Innovation Lead at Pfizer

  • Hilary Packer, Chief Technology Officer at American Express

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.

  • Joanna Zając, COO at Auctoria, Inc

  • Smita Rajmohan, Senior Counsel, Artificial Intelligence Platform, Co-Head of AI/ML Practice Group at Autodesk, Inc.

  • Parul Bhandari, Global head of media and telco partner strategy at Microsoft

  • Devika Phansalkar, Data Quality Analyst/Expert at Zeiss

  • Kleida Martiro, Partner at Glasswing Ventures

  • Oleksandra Molloy, at the University of New South Wales (Canberra)

  • Ava Amini, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research at Microsoft

  • Laua Hamilton, Investor at Notable Capital

  • Kylie Robison, Senior AI Reporter at The Verge

  • Gabriella Palmeri, VP of Partnerships at Healthvana

  • Mansi Thakar, Staff Security Analyst  at NVIDIA

  • Michelle Fang, Strategy, Office of the CEO at Cerebras Systems

  • Elif Albuz, Senior Director, Software at Cerebras Systems

  • Daria Soboleva, Senior ML Engineer at Cerebras Systems

  • Divya Saxena, Graduate Research Assistant at Florida International University

  • Gabriella Palmeri, VP of Partnerships at Healthvana

  • Jackie Rocca, VP of Product, AI at Slack

  • Yasmina Benkhoui, Senior Developer Relationship Manager at NVIDIA

  • Alice Deng, co-founder & Chief Product Officer at Slope

  • Surabhi Bhargava, Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Adobe Inc.

  • Grishma Jena, Data Scientist at IBM

  • Tatousha Narcisse Smith, Conversational AI UX Lead at Guardian Life

  • Trisha Rao, Youth President at GLOW GLOBAL LEADERSHIP OUTREACH AND WELL-BEING INC.

  • Supreet Kaur, AVP at Morgan Stanley

  • Akanksha Anand, Associate Data Scientist at CustomerInsights.AI

  • Arpita Kaushik, Data Scientist at Rocket Mortgage

  • Tracy Tse Betz, Partner at PwC

  • Robin Stein, GenAI Enablement Lead at PwC

  • Arpita Kaushik, Data Scientist at Rocket Mortgage

  • Jayeeta Putatunda, Senior Data Scientist, Manager - Emerging Tech at Fitch Group

  • Veronika Yurchuk, co-founder and CTO at traces.ai

  • Rebecca Ryakitimbo, Mrs at Core23lab

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. A special thanks also goes out to our community partners, Women in Data, Women in Big Data, Women in Voice and Firstboard.io for their valuable contributions to the space and in showcasing the many talented women working in tech. If you’re interested in attending the Women in AI Awards and the Women in AI breakfast, presented by Capital One, at VB Transform on July 10, 2024, please request an invitation here. Space is limited so be sure to reserve your spot soon.