2019 European Ada Awards Finalists Announced

On behalf of the 2019 European Ada Awards jury and under the esteemed patronage of of Ms. Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society, the Digital Leadership Institute and its partners are thrilled to announce the finalists of the 2019 European Ada Awards !

2019 European Digital Woman of the Year™ Award Finalists:

Nadia Aimé (Belgium)

Once homeless and a school dropout herself, Nadia’s work focuses on improving the lives of vulnerable groups, through education and creating more interest and enthusiasm surrounding careers within entrepreneurship and the digital sector. Today, she is an avid technologist social/tech entrepreneur, educator, a single mom, and studying cyber-security who seeks to help people evolve in a fast-paced world of technology and business. Nadia’s passion for sharing knowledge and constant learner, most especially improving her tech skills which she hones, birthed She Leads Digital, which is a Brussels based tech organization, aims at providing programs and initiatives that foster enthusiasm and encourage women and youth to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math fields.

Dee Saigal (United Kingdom)

Dee Saigal is the Founder, CEO & Creative Director of Erase All Kittens – an adventure game designed to give girls the confidence to code, whilst teaching digital and 21st Century skills. Like many women, Dee grew up believing that careers in technology were more for boys, which is why it took her years to follow her dream of getting into game design – and why she founded EAK. She and her team spent 12 months interviewing hundreds of students before designing their product, in order to create a coding tool that girls genuinely love. EAK has 150,000 players in over 100 countries, and 95% of girls want to learn more about coding after playing. Dee’s goal is for EAK to transform the way that children perceive coding and engineering, and to empower millions of girls worldwide with transferable, digital skills.

Eva Meyer de Stadelhofen (France)

Eva is the 21 year old founder of GirlCode, an international nonprofit who aims to reduce the gender gap in the STEM industry by offering free coding lessons to girls of age 7 to 17 in their schools. She also created a mentorship program through which GirlCode students can meet entrepreneurs, scientists, and all-around girl bosses in order to help them find their STEM superstar. GirlCode, which started as a small club, has rapidly grown these last two years into a worldwide “sisterhood of nerds”, with 304 clubs in 25 different countries and an estimated impact of 81’345 girls as of September 2019. Thanks to her work with her organisation, Eva has recently been chosen by Global Changemakers and the Thomas Reuters Foundation to attend their summits as one of the best entrepreneurs worldwide.

2019 European Digital Girl of the Year™ Award Finalists:

Tayra from Bulgaria (10 year old and under category)

Tayra is 10 years old and was born and lives in Sofia. Besides the gift of learning foreign languages (at the age of 8 she speaks some German, English, Chinese and Turkish), Tayra has another talent in the field of modern computer technologies. At the age of 8 Tayra participated in the  IT Znayko award contest and won a prize for an original idea and, as a member of the Coder Dojo club, won an award from the Bulgarian version of Coolest Projects Sofia 2017. The great victory comes in Dublin, Ireland, at the international competition Coolest Project 2017 involving more than 1,000 children from 17 countries. She won in the Scratch category at Coolest Projects 2017, when she is only 8 years old with her awesome project ABCD Code, which is a Scratch game developed to help children learn about healthy eating and the benefits of fruit and vegetables with the help of Makey Makey. The Healthy Eating project in English and Bulgarian version also became involved in the kindergarten process. She personally organizes and participates in workshops. At the age of 9, on 25.03.2018 she won a special prize from the Softuniada Kids (organized by Software University in Sofia, Bulgaria) with an amazing project (scratch project- “Three bears farytail”with the sign language videos for deaf kids).

Selin from Turkey (11-14 year old category)

Selin  is 13 years old and loves building robots and coding also loves animals and travelling. She started coding when she was 8 years old. Selin won first prize in the Hardware category at Coderdojo’s Coolest Projects International in 2018 with iC4U, her robot guide dog for the visually impaired. She was also a finalist in the Open Innovation category of the European Youth Awards 2018. In 2019 she received a 100% educational scholarship and attended a Robotic and Engineering summer camp held at Stanford University. She is presently working on the second version of her robot guide dog, the Raspberry Pi version and on a robot that aims to make life easier in schools and hospitals. She is hoping that her robot will help to make children’s stay in hospital a little easier if only to make them smile. She codes in Python language.    She is working on integrating image processing, voice control and artificial intelligence assisted dialogue capabilities in her robot project.  her aim is to study robotics at MIT or Stanford University and to build a humanoid. Selin speaks English, Turkish and French, she is also learning Python, C++ and Java. She facilitates workshops, mentors her peers and gives presentations at technology related events in order to inspire others especially girls.  She lives in Istanbul, Turkey with her mum, dad and dog Bailey.

Anne from Belgium (15-17 year old category)

Anne Maelbrancke, 15 years old, student at the Bernardustechnicum Oudenaarde, Belgium. Anne has been a member of Coderdojo Belgium since 2014. In 2015 she was confronted with a friend who had to stay at the hospital for quite a long time. She proposed to start an initiative called Clinicoders (facebook.com/clinicoders) to bring technology and programming to children in the hospital. Monthly, together with friend, she animates children patients with programming and robots.
Clinicoders also donates resources to hospitals to educate technology and programming in their schools. This year a “Clinimakers” initiative has been started to trigger children to build solutions for disabled children.

 

Alai from Spain (15-17 year old category)

Alai’s passion for STEM began when she was 7 years old. She has experience coding in multiple code languages, and has attended STEM workshops from textile technology to designing and 3D prototyping. In 2019, she was invited to speak at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Madrid to discuss her experience as a girl in technology. Additionally, this past May she was invited by Google to Women TechMakers Alicante to discuss her experience and future projects.

 

Congratulations to the 2019 Ada Awards finalists and all our nominees for their amazing leadership in digital fields in Europe!

Please join us at the Google Digital Atelier in Brussels on 16 October 2019 for the sixth edition of the European Ada Awards ceremony, where we will announce winners of the 2019 awards, with a special opening address by Commissioner Gabriel and a closing reception. This event is open to the public on a strictly first-come-first-served basis, with pre-registration required.

Top European Women in Tech Recognised

On 30 November 2017 at BeCentral in Brussels, the Digital Leadership Institute and its partners welcomed over two hundred key stakeholders and community members to celebrate the fifth edition of the European Ada Awards and to share the success stories of the 2017 Digital Brusselles project with support from the Digital Belgium Skills Fund. The Ada Awards are a long-standing pledge to the European Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition that recognise top European girls and women in tech and the organisations that support them.

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Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, opened the evening with a warm thank you to DLI supporters, followed by keynote presentations from Ms. Céline Vanderborght, Brussels Region Smart City Manager and Ms. Andrea Almeida Cordero, Member of Cabinet for Ms. Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for the Digital Single Market. Both speakers committed their support and that of their stakeholders to active engagement of girls and women for fulfilling the vision of an inclusive digital Europe. A subsequent tweet about the event by Commissioner Gabriel was very well received on Twitter.

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Opening presentations were succeeded by graduation of over sixty participants from the 2017 Digital Muse After School program with Ms. Valentina Cala DLI Digital Creative Manager, and from the first-ever cohort of the CYPRO “First Steps” program with Ms. Mai Ensmann, DLI CYPRO Coordinator.

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  1. Ms. Katja Legisa, Digital Brusselles Director, then recognised 200-plus participants of the 2017 “Female Digital Starters” training program, followed by an inQube / Digital Brusselles project pitching session hosted by Ms. Lama Jaghjougha, a founder of Raise Women’s Awareness Network – RWAN. Initiatives presented included those launched in the context of inQube Move It Forward events over the past two years, including:
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  • Brussely – a platform by/for/about Brussels Generation Y-ers, presented by Ms. Safia Bihmehdn
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  • MESS – a gamified concert-going platform for Brussels citizens, presented by Ms. Alexandra Pykacz & Ms. Edith Euan
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  • MIA – a virtual innovation space for Brussels citizens, presented by Ms. Muna Ibrahim
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  • African Gist – an African tech internship program, presented by Ms. Cynthia Mukendy
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  • Tabadoul – a professional mentorship program for women refugees led by ENoWM and DAW, presented by Ms. Sinem Yilmaz
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A particularly moving moment of the evening came about when, as part of her pitch for the Brussely platform, Ms. Safia Bihmehdn read a poem she composed about her participation in the Move It Forward for Women in Media event, which as the poem describes, inspired her toward a whole new direction in digital entrepreneurship and in celebrating the youth and diversity of Brussels.

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The final highlight of the evening was the 2017-18 European Ada Awards, launched with inspiring keynote presentations by Ms. Dinah Barret, Senior Solutions Architect for EMEA at Amazon Web Services, and Ms. Gabriela M. Juric, 2016 European Digital Girl of the Year, and co-hosted by Ms. Miller and Ms. Loredana Bucseneanu, DLI Strategy Officer.

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2017-18 European Ada Award trophies were presented by Ms. Simone Hume of Amazon Web Services in the following categories and announced by noted Ada Award partner representatives:
n1. Ms. Pascale Van Damme, Vice President and General Manager at Dell EMC Commercial Belux, is 2017 European Digital Woman of the Year, as announced by Ms. Austeja Trikunaite, Secretary General of CEPIS.

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2. 2017 European Digital Girl of the Year honours were awarded in the following age categories:

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15-17 Year Old Category, as announced by Ms. Kiki Walravens, GSMA:
nMaeve Galvin (Ireland)

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11-14 Year Old Category, as announced by Mr. Laurent Roux, Impact Officer at European Institute of Technology:

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  • Aoibheann Mangan (Ireland)
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  • Charlotte Johnson (United Kingdom)
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10 Years and Under Category, as announced by Ms. Tomislava Recheva of European Schoolnet:

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  • Helena Staple (United Kingdom)
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  • Zara Ilyas (Ireland)
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  • Ruby Scott Kenny (Ireland)
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3. Teen-Turn of Ireland is 2017-18 European Digital Impact Organisation of the Year Award, as announced by Ms. Michela Palladino, Director of European Policy at Developers Alliance.

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The 2017-18 European Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles celebration concluded with a reception catered by From Syria With Love, an organisation led by recent Syrian women refugees to Belgium that Digital Brusselles is honoured to support.

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The Digital Leadership Institute and Digital Brusselles would like to thank the speakers, judges, partners and sponsors of the 2017 European Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles celebration, including the Digital Belgium Skills Fund, Amazon Web Services, European Institute of Technology, CEPIS, European Schoolnet, Edosoft, GSMA, Developers Alliance and BeCentral.

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Congratulations to all the girls and women recognised by this year’s Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles celebration. We are looking forward to welcoming even more of you again next year!

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2017 European Ada Award Finalists Named

Congratulations to the finalists of the 2017 European Ada Awards, a global initiative recognizing outstanding girls and women in digital studies and careers across Europe, and the organisations who support them! Join us on 30th of November at BeCentral, Cantersteen 12 in Brussels to the 2017 European  Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles Celebration where the winners will be announced!

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2017 European Digital Women of the Year™ Award Finalists:

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Cat Lamin – Consultant at Pi-Top (United Kingdom)

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Cat is a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, an Apple Distinguished Educator and a Google Certified Teacher. She initiated an event called Coding Evening for Teachers in UK that  brings together teachers, coding professionals and tech enthusiasts and allows them to work together to discuss ideas for the classroom. Her independent work has led to her being invited to Brazil to train and speak to a number of Brazilian teachers about the importance of computational thinking and basic computer science skills. She is a role-model for young, female coders and a lot of her outreach work includes working with groups that are actively encouraging girls to get involved with coding, including girls-only CoderDojos in London.

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Pascale Van Damme, Vice President and General Manager at Dell EMC Commercial Belux and Head of EMEA NATO & NATO Alliances, President Agoria Digital Industries (Belgium)

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When she started at Dell, Pascale was the only woman on the local leadership team. Tackling being female leader challenge in a positive way along with the learning experience is what motivated her to start building alliances to raise awareness around gender equality and bring about change. Pascale has been active for years in mentoring young women, speed-dating with students and coaching female entrepreneurs. She is a role model to women thinking about entering a career in the digital world and to those who have started a career within Dell.  She regularly “talks the talk” and “walks the walk” regarding the skills needed for a career in tech, at high-level events such as the NATO’s annual cyber symposium NIAS where as a speaker she raised awareness around the need for female talent in cybersecurity along with diversity and inclusion in any future-oriented organization.

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Egle Ciuoderiene, International Cooperation Advisor at the Baltic Institute of Advanced Technology (Lithuania)

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Egle inspires people of all ages to take part in the ICT industry through whatever means, despite any boundaries imposed by the society. She continuously shares her experience in breaking the industry’s boundaries through interviews and personal communication. Egle always emphasises that girls should not be afraid of the digital occupations, as she herself has made a successful transfer from a humanitarian background. Egle shares her experience and motivates women to partake in the fields of Computer Science – she has recently joined the Baltic Institute of Advanced Technology, which aims to create, develop and disseminate scientific knowledge and expertise about in the field of technology and innovation.

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2017 European Digital Impact Organisation of the Year™ Award Finalists:

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Teen-Turn (Ireland)

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Teen-Turn works with companies throughout Ireland to cross the digital divide by providing hands-on work experience in technology career environments to teenaged girls from disadvantaged communities in order to address the industry’s social inclusion, gender disparity and skills shortage challenges.

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Girls’ Day (Germany)

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Girls’ Day is an organization that invites technical enterprises, enterprises with technical departments and technical training facilities, universities, and research centres to present themselves at an open day for girls called Girl’s day.

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StartHer (France)

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The mission of the French group is particularly to thrive women into the technology sector and to encourage diversity in a traditionally male environment. StartHer organized many events throughout the years, either in the form of a mini-conference around a specific topic with people who work in the tech sector or through a Happy Hour of pure networking to facilitate trade within the networks.

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2016-2017 European Digital Girl of the Year™ Award Finalists:

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Under 10 year-old category

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Helena Staple (United Kingdom)

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Helena is a regular member of a CoderDojo Ham, a volunteer-led free coding club for youngsters based at Kingston University London. After becoming proficient in Scratch she moved on to learning Python. Over the last year she has developed a strong interest and commitment to mentoring younger children learning Scratch. From a shy start she has grown in confidence and communication skills, and is now at ease helping children considerably older than her. She created a wonderful project to make a personalised interactive Birthday Card in Scratch and developed a great instruction handout entirely on her own. This has become one of our most popular Scratch activities. Older children trying it are constantly astonished that it was made by such a young ninja!

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Zara Ilyas (Ireland)

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Zara has attended CoderDojo since the beginning and came to every Robotics session. She has an insatiable passion for technology and learning, and is a reliable partner and an inspiration for other young girls that share the same interest.

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Ruby Scott Kenny (Ireland)

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Together with her good friend Zara, Ruby is a regular participant to the CoderDojo events, inspiring other girls and her professors alike. She is always keen to support her colleagues  in understanding technology and always interested in learning more.

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11-14 year-old category

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Aoibheann Mangan (Ireland)

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Aoibheann Mangan has been working hard promoting technology and coding for girls over the last number of years delivering workshops in her local education centre and school. She has been a mentor with Coder Dojo in Cloghans Hill Coder Dojo and Robeen coder dojo for the last 2 years delivering workshops to lots of boys and girls many of whom have no internet or computers at home. Aoibheann has encouraged girls to give it a go and do their best and made several workshops girls only events where she has shown them that girls can do anything they want when it comes to digital skills. Aoibheann has campaigned in Ireland for better internet for rural Ireland highlighting how unfair it is for young people growing up with no broadband.

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Charlotte Johnson (United Kingdom)

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Charlotte has really enjoyed the fun and skills at CoderDojo Scotland. She had a great experience at Coolest Projects 17, at CodeEU17 and was named one of three coding rising stars in UK 2017. She partnered with one of her coding colleagues with whom she is working on a project for Coolest Projects 18.

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15-17 year-old category

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Maeve Galvin (Ireland)

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Maeve has won her age category in the Tech Week Ireland Scratch competition for three years running. She is now a mentor teaching younger children Scratch in her local CoderDojo, giving up her free time every weekend and preparing lessons every week.

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2017 European Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles Celebration:

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2017 European Ada Award Winners will be announced at the fifth annual European Ada Awards Ceremony on 30 November 2017 at BeCentral, Cantersteen 12, ahead of the celebration of the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Lady Ada Lovelace!  Public attendance is welcome but registration at this link is required!

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2017-18 Ada Awards Launched at Digital Agenda Assembly

On 16 June 2017, in celebration of the 2017 European Digital Assembly taking place as part of the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU, the Digital Leadership Institute and its partners are proud to launch online nominations for the fourth annual edition of the European Ada Awards, a long-standing pledge to the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition for Europe.

The European Ada Awards recognise top girls and women in digital studies and careers in Europe, and organisations impacting the ecosystem to increase participation of girls and women in tech.

To nominate candidates for the 2017-18 European Ada Awards, please visit the links below:

Questions and interest to support the Ada Awards may be directed to DLI here. National partners are actively being sought to roll out the Ada Awards across Europe and around the world.

The Ada Awards are an initiative of the Digital Leadership Institute in partnership with CEPIS, DIGITALEUROPE, ECWT
and European Schoolnet.

Nominations Open for European Ada Awards

On 25 April, in celebration of the 2016 International Girls in ICT Day, the Digital Leadership Institute and its partners opened nominations for 2016-2017 European Ada Awards for Digital Woman of the Year, Digital Girl of the Year and Digital Impact Organisation of the Year!

Please follow the links below to submit nominations by 21 October 2016: 28 October (deadline extended)!

Finalists in each category will be announced on 14 November, and winners will be awarded at the fourth annual Ada Awards Ceremony taking place in celebration of the birth of Ada Lovelace on 8 December 2016 at The Square Brussels, as part of GE Garages 2016 and the European Commission’s Vocational Skills Week 2016.

For more details please consult the 2016 Ada Awards calendar and feel free to contact us with any inquiries!