Asia Women Tech Leaders Award winners announced for 2024

Fifty winners have been announced for the inaugural Asia Women Tech Leaders Awards (AWTLA), whose presenting sponsor is HCLTech. Celebrating the achievements of trailblazing women in the tech industry, AWTLA seeks to inspire and empower the next generation of female tech leaders while underscoring gender diversity in fostering human capital development. 

The award organisers noted that the gender gap can be wide. They cited Unesco, which found that only 20% of employees in technical roles in major machine learning (ML) companies are women, while 12% of AI researchers globally are women. In addition, 6% of professional software developers are women. Unesco figures also show that women and girls are 25% less likely than men to know how to leverage digital technology for basic purposes, four times less likely to know how to code, and 13 times less likely to file for an information and communications technology (ICT) patent.

The AWTLA aims to highlight the exceptional talents of women technologists who reside in Asia, breaking barriers and spearheading innovations within the tech sector in Asia. A total of 126 nominations from 13 countries in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) were received.

Source: AWTLA. Winners pose at the award ceremony.

The winners were selected because they are inspiring, have demonstrated technical expertise and proficiency, and are technical business leaders:

- Adelina Adna Adenan, Co-Founder of Passion8 Creative Space, Malaysia

- Ai Kiar Ang, Data Scientist, IBM, Singapore

- Aishah Farha Mohd Raih, Chief Information Security Officer, Permodalan Nasional, Malaysia

- Dr Aishwarya Bandla, R&D Manager, Paxman Coolers, Singapore

- Aishwarya Ramakrishnan, Senior VP, Asia Pacific Engineering, BNY Mellon, Singapore

- Alexandra Mercz, Founder, Synterra Asia, Singapore

- Angela Coble OAM (The Medal of the Order of Australia), CTO, Accenture Australia, Australia

- Archana Manjunatha, Executive Director, DBS, Singapore

- Aruna Kolluru, Chief Technologist for Artificial Intelligence at Dell Technologies in the
Asia Pacific and Japan, Australia

- Professor Atreyi Kankanhalli, Provost’s Chair Professor, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore

- Bolor-Ujin Badraa, Head of IT Delivery Service Department, Khan Bank Mongolia, Mongolia

- Caecilia CHU, Co-Founder & CEO. YouTrip, Singapore

- Cathy Tang, Product and Technology Manager, Livibank, Hong Kong

- Dayle Stevens OAM (The Medal of the Order of Australia), Executive - Data & AI, Telstra, Australia

- Dharani Karthikeyan, VP, Global Head of Engineering for Analytics, SAP, SAP Labs India

- Elizabeth Chan, Registered Foreign Lawyer at Tanner De Witt, Hong Kong

- Professor Genevieve Bell, first female Vice-Chancellor and President of The Australian National
University and former Director of the School of Cybernetics at The Australian National
University

- Dr Geraldine Wong, Chief Data Officer, GXS, Singapore

- Helen De Ornellas, Head of Innovation & FinTech, Westpac Banking Corporation, Australia

- Jamie Neo, Director of Engineering, HP, Singapore

- Jane WANG, Co-Founder & CEO, Roceso Technologies, Singapore

- Dr Jia Zhunan, Founder and CEO, Breathonix, Singapore

- Kathy Chan, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley, Global Head of Trading Risk Control
Technology, Institutional Securities Technology, Morgan Stanley, Hong Kong 

- Dr Mabel Yen Ngoc Nguyen, CEO and Co-Founder, EloCare, Singapore

 - Mah Kam Lin, Former Group Data Scientist/Advisor, Executive VP (recently retired), Malayan Banking, Malaysia

- Malabika Mukherjee, Architect Digital - Touchless & Automation, AkzoNobel, India

- Maria Francesca Montes Del Rosario, Undersecretary, Philippines Department of Budget and Management, Philippines

- Maria Paz, CTO, Epworth Health, Australia

- Mei May Soo, Director, Data Science & AI, Global Presales, Dell Technologies, Singapore

- Nah Fui-Hoon Fiona, Professor, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

- Neha Mehta, CEO and Founder of FemTech Partners, Singapore

- Dr Ong Chen Hui, Assistant Chief Executive of Business and Technology Group at the Infocomm and Media Development Authority (IMDA), Singapore

- Ong Hwee Yee, R&D Principal Engineer, HP, Singapore

- Peiru Teo, CEO of KeyReply, Singapore

- Priyanka Porwal, Chief Architect and Senior Manager at SAP Labs India, India

- Quinny Lei, Head of Business IT Solutions, GTS, Grab, Singapore

- Saw Seang Mei, Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School; Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI);
NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, Singapore

- Dr Shao Huilin, Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Design &
Engineering, National University of Singapore’s College of Design & Engineering, Singapore

- Dr Sharmili Roy, Co-Founder and CTO, Zoala, Singapore

- Sharon Ng, Ministry Family CIO & Cluster Director,  Trade & Industry, Govtech Singapore, Singapore

- Shilesh Shekhawat, Global Co-Head, Equities and Futures Execution Product, Citibank, Hong Kong

- Dr Shonali Krishnaswamy, CTO, AIDA Technologies, Singapore

- Silvia Lam Ihensekhien, Director of Information Security and Risk Management, Swire Coca-Cola, Hong Kong

- Professor Sun Sun Lim, VP of Partnerships and Engagement at Singapore Management University (SMU), Singapore

- Supriya Rao Patwardhan, Executive VP, DHL Group, Singapore

- Teja Manakame, VP (IT), Dell Technologies, India

- Professor Wynne Hsu, Director (Institute of Data Science), Provost’s Chair Professor (Department of
Computer Science, School of Computing), National University of Singapore, Singapore

- Yeong Wai Yee, Professor and Chair, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Hashtags: #AWTLA, #AWTLA2024