Industry veterans vie for Women in ICT career achievement award
The finalists for the 2025 Women in ICT Awards have been revealed, with professionals from many of Australia’s largest consultancies in the running across a range of career-stage categories.
An initiative of industry publication ARN, the Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) have been running since 2012 to celebrate female excellence across the Australian ICT industry, from graduate-level through to established executives. The winners will be announced at an event in Sydney in May.
In the running this year are a number of professionals from Australia’s largest consultancies, including Accenture, Deloitte, PwC and Cognizant, with the latter’s APJ public sector & healthcare lead Clare Cranston competing for the ‘Achievement’ title, awarded to those with more than two decades of IT industry experience under their belts.
A finalist in the ‘multinational partner’ category, Cranston has been with Cognizant since 2023 after joining from her Asia Pacific customer success & delivery director role at acquisition Contino, before which she worked at Logicalis, Optus, Interactive, and IBM, the latter where she spent the first decade of her career.
Cranston will be up against former Logicalis colleague and acting Australia general manager Lisa Fortey; Datacom cybersecurity practice lead Petro Nel (ex-CGI; Natalie Rice, software licensing consulting practice lead at Insight; and Helen Airiyan, who was recently appointed head of partner alliances for the A/NZ branch of SoftwareOne.
Meanwhile, finalists in the ‘partner’ bracket include Kelly Drewett and Dimity Holliday of Exposé and Chamonix IT, bought last year by Synechron; Renee Mortlock and Olga Rankin of D6 and its umbrella Connetico; and Angela Logan-Bell (Interactive), Galit Jona (Delta Insights), Debbie Watson (Nexon), Philippa Lyons (RTV), and Tanya Hain of Spirit Technology Solutions.
Last year’s Achievement award in the ‘multinational partner’ category went to Insight APAC sales operations director Jenny Southon, with Canberra-based Deloitte technology & business transformation partner Joana Valente receiving a ‘highly commended’ nod, while Julie Barbieri, formerly of NTT Data and now with HPE, winning the ‘partner’ bracket.
Altogether, more than 100 organisations will be represented this year by the 186 finalists across eight overarching categories, which further include ‘graduate’ and ‘rising star’ awards for earlier-career entries and recognition in areas such as innovation, technical expertise, entrepreneurship, and championing diversity & inclusion.
“This is a stunning display of emerging and established female talent in Australia,” ARN editor Julia Talevski stated. “This year’s finalists have set an extremely high bar and are a source of inspiration for women leading the way in technology. Our goal is simple, to ensure as many outstanding women are endorsed through this unique awards program.”
