TVNewsCheck Honors Women In Tech

LAS VEGAS — TVNewsCheck’s 2018 Women in Technology Awards were presented Tuesday evening with this year’s honorees turning the spotlight right back on those who had help them get there.

But not before TVN Publisher and Co-Founder Kathy Haley could heap praise on them. “We have found that women who rise to the top of this field are not just great thinkers,” Haley said. “They are great communicators and highly effective leaders.”

Diane Tryneski, EVP of technology and chief digital officer for HBO, received the highest honor, the Women in Technology Leadership Award.

Tryneski started her career at WNET in New York, moving to ABC-TV, where she rose to SVP of TV operations, then shifted over to the Discovery Channel to build the Discovery Operations Group. After another stint at ABC as head of business continuity for network distribution, she joined HBO in 2008, where she helped establish a holistic, integrated and agile approach to content capture and delivery. 

“Diane’s greatest strength as a leader… lies in her ability to drive a participative culture in which everyone feels heard,” Haley said. “She projects an air of confidence and willingness to make difficult decisions, and that inspires her staff to think boldly and creatively.”

For her part, Tryneski used the honor to pay heartfelt tribute to her mentor, the late Preston Davis, who she worked under when he was president of the broadcast operations and engineering division of ABC Disney.

“Preston had the ability to be completely open to all points of view. It sounds simple, but it’s really quite powerful,” she said. “It didn’t matter where the idea originated from in the organization — it could be the most senior to the least senior employee. Preston treated them with the same thoughtful review.”

Tryneski said she tries to emulate Davis’ leadership style now and continuously listen to a diversity of ideas. “We all have the opportunity to make a difference either through leadership, mentorship or simply with your day-to-day interactions,” she said. “There’s someone looking up to you, counting on you or learning from you. What you say matters, what you do matters and how you do it matters.”

Also honored was Deb Adeogba, director of news technology at Seattle’s KIRO and Cox Media Group, who received one of the two Technology Women to Watch Awards.

Adeogba leads a team of 40 photographers, editors, remote engineers and directors and among other achievements, helped KIRO to become the first TV station in the country to distribute news in both voice and video on Amazon’s Echo platform.

“I’ve been so fortunate in my career to meet both women and men who have supported and encouraged my quest for knowledge,” she said in accepting her award.

Jaclyn Pytlarz, senior engineer for applied vision science at Dolby Labs, was also honored with a Technology Women to Watch Award.

Pytlarz works on color mapping and display management algorithms to help maintain the director’s experience on displays under different ambient conditions. Among her the achievements in her young career was helping to create a new color signal — ICtCp — and convincing world standards experts to include it in new HDR specifications.

Pytlarz thanked Dolby Laboratories in accepting the award. “They’ve really embraced me as an engineer, letting me take leadership roles right away, trusting me, letting me learn and inviting me into everything that was unique to the company,” she said.

“Ten years ago I didn’t actually know what this industry was, so it’s amazing that I’m here today.”

Read all of TVNewsCheck‘s NAB 2018 news here.