TVNewsCheck will present the 10th Annual Women in Technology Awards and a “Predictions for 2021” panel session featuring all six honorees on Monday, Oct. 19, at 4 p.m. ET. To attend, register here.
Typically presented in April at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, the 2020 awards will be presented virtually, on the eve of TVNewsCheck’s fourth annual TV2025: Monetizing the Future conference, which will take place Oct. 20-24, also in virtual form. Immediately following the Women in Technology Awards presentation ceremony at 4 p.m. ET, honorees will participate in a panel session during which they’ll talk about changes the industry’s technology landscape has undergone in 2020 and how those are likely to affect 2021.
“The media and entertainment industry has been experiencing a remarkable year, in which widespread remote production, spurred by a global pandemic, has sped up planning for and in some cases implementation of new IP facilities and cloud-based workflows,” said TVNewsCheck Publisher Kathy Haley. “We can’t think of a more interesting group of people to talk about how this will affect technology and business in 2021 than the six women being recognized with Women in Technology Awards this year.”
The awards turn a spotlight on women who have contributed significantly to the advancement of media industry technology, or who have demonstrated a likelihood of doing so someday.
They support the NAB Leadership Foundation’s Technology Apprenticeship Program, which provides training and internships to graduating engineers who are women or people of color.
Recognizing Leadership
The evening’s top honor, the Women in Technology Leadership Award, will be presented for the first time to two women.
SMPTE’s Barbara Lange
The first is Barbara Lange, executive director of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Since taking the helm of SMPTE in January of 2010, Lange has led the organization through a transformation process that has included modernization of its standards setting process, expansion of its educational programming and a 30% increase in membership.
WarnerMedia’s Lisa Pedrogo
Also receiving the Women in Technology Leadership Award is Lisa Pedrogo, vice president of engineering and strategic initiatives at WarnerMedia Global Broadcast Technology Services. Pedrogo, who began her career as a journalist at CNN, transitioned quickly to operations management. She has overseen the implementation of several CNN facilities, including the CNN Time Warner Center build, CNN HD network launch, the London and Los Angeles bureau rebuild projects and most recently, the three-year-long design build and move of CNN’s New York operation to Hudson Yards.
Spotlighting Futurists
The Women in Technology Futurist Award, recognizing women who pioneer new technologies or play a significant role in advancing a broad technological change, will also go to two women this year.
Perspective Media’s Janet Gardner
Janet Gardner is president of Perspective Media Group, an industry leading consulting company that works with major media companies on evolving their workflow, media management, metadata integration and internal media supply chains. The goal is to help companies put the right capabilities, metadata and information models, systems and technical infrastructure in place so they can more fully exploit their assets.
latakoo’s Jade Kurian
Jade Kurian is co-founder and president of latakoo, a provider of rapid video file transport. A television journalist for 20 years, Kurian and co-founder Paul Adrian developed a technology that makes it easier to send large files over the internet, no matter the quality of the connection. The company has since added solutions to further enhance news workflow and this year, has seen exponential growth as media companies deployed widespread remote workflows to cope with a global pandemic.
Rising Stars
The 2020 Technology Women to Watch Award, recognizing women who show significant promise of influencing technological development in the future, will go to Kate Ketcham, director of Media Composer product management at Avid Technologies and Sally Hattori, executive director of advanced technology and engineering at Walt Disney Co.
Avid’s Kate Ketcham
Ketcham, who has worked at Avid for 15 years, caught the attention of management with her tendency to be unafraid to shake up the status quo when updating or reimagining products. Most recently, she led the overhaul of Media Composer, creating a new interface that veteran users can reconfigure to fit their needs, but that, in its default form, is easy to grasp for new users.
Disney’s Sally Hatori
Hattori leads a group that explores new technologies and develops requirements and workflow in production, post-production and home distribution. Her team also contributes in technical standardizations. She held this same role at Twentieth Century Fox prior to its acquisition by Walt Disney Co., and has also worked at Sony, where she was also involved in developing technology standards and strategy.
To attend the 10th annual Women in Technology Awards and “Predictions for 2021” panel, please register here. To submit questions for the panel, talk about the issues with fellow attendees and keep up with announcements about the awards, download the TVNewsCheck Events app in the Apple or Android stores.
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