Winners of 2021 Rise Awards celebrate success

Rise, the award-winning advocacy group for gender diversity in the media technology sector, has announced the winners for the 2021 Rise Awards.

The awards ceremony, held on Thursday 18 November in London as part of the DPP Tech Leaders’ Briefing, was attended by over 200 in-person guests bringing the industry together for a great evening celebrating the achievements of this year’s winners and nominees. The ceremony was streamed globally for the first time by Red Bee Media.

The judges considered over 100 nominations from an extraordinary calibre of talented and inspirational women around the globe from countries including Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, UK and USA, working in a variety of media technology roles.

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The winners of the 2021 Rise Awards, and those shortlisted, are:

Marketer/PR | sponsored by Annex Pro

• Silvia Botella, Marketing Manager, Red Bee Media – WINNER
• Melanie Crandall, Demand Generation Manager, Vizrt
• Lauren McIntosh, Global Marketing Manager, Accedo

R&D Engineer | sponsored by Ateliere Creative Technologies

• Laura Bunea, R&D Engineer, Vizrt – WINNER
• Michelle Griffin, Product Engineering Manager, farmerswife and Cirkus
• Jennifer Zeidan, Engineering Manager, Media Systems Infrastructure, Netflix

Rising Star | sponsored by Avid

• Neave Spikings, Support Engineer, ITV Studios – WINNER
• Sophie Lambert, Freelance
• Jane Lawrance, VT Guarantee, Timeline Television
• Georgia Thirtle, Sound Engineer, Gravity Media

NEW – Influencer | sponsored by Bitmovin

• Louise Patel, Co-Director, The Inside Project / Share My Telly Job – WINNER
• Marianna Montague, Senior Director Customer Success Management, Avid
• Kylee Peña, Manager, Creative Technologies Program Management, Netflix

Production Support Engineer | Sponsored by Blackmagic Design

• Carys Hughes, Engineer – Emerging Technologies, Sky – WINNER
• Sophie Colvin, Vision Guarantee Manager, Gravity Media
• Mirusha Jegatheeswaran, Content Technology Support Engineer, ITV Daytime

Product Innovation | sponsored by Clear-Com

• Karen Walker, Vice President – Camera Motion Systems, Ross Video – WINNER
• Izabella Koukorava, Head of Product, Sky
• Michelle Munson, CEO and Co-Founder, Eluvi

Sales | sponsored by Deluxe

• Karen Clark, Head of Australian and New Zealand Sales, Telstra – WINNER
• Angela Gibbons, Head of Sales, EMG UK
• Laura Wignall, Business Development Manager – Production, Gravity Media

Business | sponsored by Live-U

• Michelle Munson, CEO and Co-Founder, Eluvio – WINNER
• Johanna Björklund, Co-founder and CTO, Codemill
• Alison Pitchford, Group Managing Director, MBI
• Heidi Shakespeare, Director – IMES Europe

Technical Operations | sponsored by Ross Video

• Rebecca Moore, Director Technical Operations, CNNI – WINNER
• Kate Furtas, Key Account Manager, Deluxe Media
• Rebecca Smith, Audio Assistant, Platform Post Production

NEW – Student | sponsored by SMPTE

• Holly van der Rest, Solent University – WINNER
• Katherine King, University of Pittsburgh
• Sama Mirmiran, University of Surrey

NEW – Company Award For Investment in Women | sponsored by Telstra

• Visual Data Media Services – WINNER
• Deluxe Localisation
• Newsbridge

The Woman of the Year Award, sponsored by Zixi, was announced previously, with Inga Ruehl of Sky Sports and Borika Vucinic of Bell Media jointly taking the coveted prize.