Aliza Knox wins the Women of the Year in the Women in IT Asia Awards 2020 as IT powerhouses came together to celebrate Asia’s influential women in IT.
Having worked for Visa, Google and Twitter, among others, Knox has extraordinary experience as a woman in the IT space and brings that to her work at Cloudflare.
Knox won the award for her work as Head of APAC for Cloudflare, where she is known in the tech space for the contributions she has made to drive awareness of female representation within cloud computing.
On accepting her award, Knox took time to remember and thank the women who paved the way for women like her today: “They fought hard. They dedicated their lives to gain equal rights and opportunities and greater personal freedom for women and everyone.
“They got all of us here.”
She then called on her fellow winners and nominees to pass on their torch and continue paving the way for women across the world: “Thank you again, and let’s honour all of the amazing award recipients by congratulating them here today and paying it forward.”
Author and award-winning coach Able Wanamakok hosted the Women in IT Asia Awards, sponsored by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The awards aim to celebrate the strides and progress made by women in IT at a time were 14% of women who pursue an education in IT never enter the workforce.
Celebrating the winners
Other winners of the evening included Ivy Young, who was crowned the Advocate of the Year. Young, who is the Head of Security from AWS Professional ASEAN team, has been recognised for her work co-founding Cloud Seeders, a member-centric cloud learning community for women.
Young hopes that more women in the IT space will continue to come together and join Cloud Seeders, saying when accepting her award: “I hope more women will join us to learn and reinvent themselves.”
Women supporting women was the theme of the night, with Accenture Singapore’s Initiative for Mothers being crowned the Diversity Initiative of the Year, sponsored by DHL. The initiative includes extended paid maternity leave and flexible work arrangements which are being applied across the board to retain mothers and helps achieve the firm’s vision of 25% Women MD roles by 2020.
Sonia Gupta accepted the award on behalf of Accenture, saying: “It is a great honour to receive this award on behalf of Accenture and to be recognised for the efforts that we have made to create a more equal workforce in Southeast Asia. We made great progress in the past year. But we fully appreciate that the best is yet to come, and we have a long road ahead.”
Sponsors and support
The Women in IT Asia Awards 2020, organised by DiversityQ and Information Age (Bonhill Group publications), were headline sponsored by AWS. The award sponsors of the evening were Bank of America, BP, Cloudflare, DHL, JLL, Mastercard and Ericsson.
After celebrating all the worthy winners, Wanamakok closed the ceremony, saying: “Even though we’re not physically together, our spirits are together, and we continue to lift and support each other.
“I look forward to learning a lot from all of you, as well. Thank you, I am so grateful to be your host this evening.”
Women in IT Asia Award Winners 2020
Advocate of the Year
Ivy Young, AWS Singapore
Business Role Model of the Year
Carolyn Chin-Parry, PwC
CIO of the Year
Sophie Leung, J.P. Morgan
Data Leader of the Year
Celine Le Cotonnec, Bank of Singapore
Digital Leader of the Year
Penny Murphy, Arcadis
Diversity Initiative of the Year
Initiative for Mothers, Accenture Singapore
Employer of the Year
Accenture
Entrepreneur of the Year
Jeeta Bandopadhyay, Tookitaki
Fintech Project of the Year
Nelly Jimron, MatchMove Pay
IT Team of the Year (Led by a Woman)
Grab – Team led by Sri Thiba Santhira Seakaran, Grab
Male Ally of the Year
Pavel Bulowski, Meiro / Shelovesdata
Tech for Good
Nandhini Karthikeyan, Numer8
Transformation Leader of the Year
Lorraine Choo Yin Ong, Government Technology Agency
Woman of the Year
Aliza Knox, Cloudfare
Young Leader of the Year
Valerie Lim, Gojek
