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Aug 17, 20236 min read

Finalists and Special Jury Recognitions announced for Women in AI Awards North America 2023

By Frincy Clement, Susan Verdiguel, Bhuva Shakti and Alessandra Sala



Women in AI North America is thrilled to announce the nominees who made it to the Finalists and Special Jury Awards for the Women in AI Awards North America 2023. In its second edition, 100+ women across Canada, USA and Mexico will be honored at the in-person award ceremony in Toronto, Canada. This year, we have 92 Finalists across 10 award categories and 11 Special Jury recognitions to be awarded at the ceremony. This celebration will also witness the BIGGEST reveal of winners of each award category.

We are pleased to announce our partnership with Big Data & AI Conference to host our annual Women in AI Awards North America. By joining forces, we aim to amplify the impact of diversity and inclusion in the field of Artificial Intelligence, fostering innovation and driving positive change.

All of the Winners, Finalists and Special Jury Recognitions will be honored with their special awards, on the big stage at the Big Data & AI Conference on Wednesday October 18, 2023, at Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto, Canada, in the presence of AI community leaders, Honorary Chairs from each country, Award Sponsors, Advisors and Jury members. This extravagant in-person award ceremony gathering the pioneers and leaders in AI across North America is open for registration. Early bird pricing ends on August 31, 2023.

Special Jury Recognitions and Finalists

The Women in AI Awards North America Special Jury Recognitions are awarded to:

  1. Ariana Gomez, CEO, Technology for Impact (Mexico)

  2. Elissa Strome, Executive Director, Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, CIFAR (Canada)

  3. Elizabeth Adams, Scholar-Practitioner, EMA Advisory Services (United States)

  4. Fion Lee-Madan, Co-Founder and COO, Fairly AI (Canada)

  5. Humera Malik, CEO, Canvass AI (Canada)

  6. Laura Safdie, COO & General Counsel, Casetext (United States)

  7. Luz Elena González, Projects and Communications Leader, PIT Policy Lab (Mexico)

  8. Melike Erol-Kantarci, Professor and Chief AI\ML Data Scientist, Ericsson and University of Ottawa (Canada)

  9. Regina Cervera, MSc. Projects Coordinator, C Minds (Mexico)

  10. Saloni Potdar, Senior AI/ML manager, Apple Inc. (United States)

  11. Sudha Jamthe, Technology Futurist, Global South in AI (United States)


The Women in AI Awards North America Finalists by categories are:

  1. Outstanding in AI - Young Role Model of the Year

    1. Dr. Amira Aissiou, Co-Founder & Co-Director, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Student Society (Canada)

    2. Ashley Girgis, Master of Health Informatics Student, University of Toronto (Canada)

    3. Bhaktipriya Radharapu, Tech Lead, Responsible AI, Google (United States)

    4. Jeannie Yoo, President of UofT AI, Undergraduate Student at the University of Toronto, (Canada)

    5. Kaitlin Bustos, Data Science Mentor, SharpestMinds (Canada)

    6. Minh Anh Dong Nguyen, AI Enthusiast and developer, The Knowledge Society (Canada)

    7. Natasha Rozario, Student, University of Toronto (Canada)

    8. Nyrma Paulina Hernandez Trejo, Data Scientist, Sofía (Mexico)

    9. Shiza Charania, Biomedical Imaging Researcher, University Health Network (Canada)

    10. Tanya Joon, Machine Learning Engineer, Okaki Health Intelligence Inc (Canada)

    11. Teresa Datta, Machine Learning Engineer, Arthur (United States)

  2. Lifetime Achievement Award - Women in AI of the Year

    1. Constanza Gomez-Mont, Founder, Principal C Minds; Co-Founder AI for Climate; 2021-2022 Chair GCF AI for Humanity World Economic Forum, C Minds / AI for Climate (Mexico)

    2. Dr. Elena Estavillo, CEO, President, Centro-i para la Sociedad del Futuro (Mexico)

    3. Merve Hickok, Chairwoman and Research Director, Center for AI and Digital Policy (United States)

    4. Nicole Janssen, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, AltaML (Canada)

    5. Sedef Akinli Kocak, Director of Professional Development, Vector Institute (Canada)

    6. Shyamala Prayaga, Senior Software Product Manager, Conversational AI - Deep learning, NVIDIA (United States)

  3. AI in Startup - AI Entrepreneur of the Year

    1. Atzel Fernanda Abad López, Bionics Engineer, LAIA Technologies (Mexico)

    2. Dora Jambor, CEO & Founder, Mohana Intelligence Inc. (Canada)

    3. Suchi Saria, PhD, Founder and CEO of Bayesian Health, the John C. Malone endowed chair and the Director of the Machine Learning, AI and Healthcare Lab at Johns Hopkins University (United States)

    4. Susan Groeneveld, Founder, Sylvester.ai (Canada)

    5. Susan Sly, Co-CEO and Cofounder, RadiusAI (United States)

    6. Wendy Ward, Founder, futuresTHRIVE LTD (United States)

  4. AI in Research - AI Researcher of the Year

    1. Chhavi Chauhan, Director of Scientific Outreach, American Society for Investigative Pathology (United States)

    2. Dr. Marisol Flores-Garrido, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico)

    3. Martha White, Associate Professor, University of Alberta (Canada)

    4. Reshmi Sarkar, Assistant Research Scientist, Texas A&M AgriLife Research (United States)

    5. Samira Rahimi, Assistant Professor, McGill University (Canada)

    6. Shrimai Prabhumoye, Research Scientist, Nvidia (United States)

    7. Zakia Hammal, Systems Scientist and Assistant Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University (United States)

  5. AI in Government - AI Disruptor of the Year

    1. Lucia Guadalupe Macias Morales, Master's Degree in WEB Technologies, General Office of Information Technology and Telecommunications of the Ministry of Finance, Investment and Administration of the Government of the State of Guanajuato (Mexico)

    2. Maria Glenski, Senior Data Scientist and Team Lead, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (United States)

    3. Valerie Nelson, Senior Data Architect, E Cyber7 Technologies, LLC (United States)

  6. AI in Industry - AI Innovator of the Year

    1. Celene Osiecka, Senior Director, Onboarding & Optimization, [24]7.ai (Canada)

    2. Celia Wanderley, Chief Technology Officer, AltaML (Canada)

    3. Chathuri Daluwatte, Head of AI Diagnostics, Alexion AstraZeneca Rare Disease (United States)

    4. Debbie Yu, Co-Founder, President, Board Member, ISEE.AI (United States)

    5. Deepali Arora, Senior Principal Data Scientist, Oracle (Canada)

    6. Deepti Kalra, Vice-President – Data & Analytics, EXLService Holdings, Inc (United States)

    7. Fabiola Velarde Galicia, Coordinator of the entrepreneurship component at fAIr LAC Jalisco, Instituto de Emprendimiento Eugenio Garza Lagüera del Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)

    8. Genevieve Taurand, Product Manager I, Bentley Systems (Canada)

    9. Hayde Martinez, Head of AI, Wizeline (Mexico)

    10. Jennifer Vlasiu, Senior Program Manager/Senior Data Scientist at Microsoft | Data Analytics Instructor at York University, Microsoft Canada (Canada)

    11. Marzieh Zare, Lead Data Scientist, Dreeven Technologies Inc (Canada)

    12. Melinda Han Williams, Chief Data Scientist, Dstillery (United States)

    13. Nyla Worker Flores, Director of Product, Convai (United States)

    14. Parnaz Tabrizian, Former Director Investment Science, Canada Pension Plan Investments (Canada)

    15. Raquel Urtasun, Founder and CEO, Waabi (Canada)

    16. Razi Bayati, Sr Manager Data Scientist, Rogers (Canada)

    17. Sujatha Perepa, Distinguished Engineer, IBM (United States)

    18. Susan Shu Chang, Principal Data Scientist, Elastic (Canada)

    19. Veronica Gutiérrez, Operations Manager, IBM (Mexico)

    20. Zarreen Reza, Senior Applied AI Research Scientist, JACOBB - Centre d’intelligence artificielle appliquée (Canada)

  7. AI for Good - Responsible AI Leader of the Year

    1. Diya Wynn, Senior Practice Manager, Responsible AI, Amazon Web Services (United States)

    2. Golnoosh Farnadi, Assistant Professor, Hec Montreal/Mila (Canada)

    3. Isabelle Bichler-Eliasaf, Co-founder & COO, retrain.ai (United States)

    4. Karen Kilroy, Author, Kilroy Blockchain (United States)

    5. Lama Saouma, AI Initiatives Lead, Global Partnership on AI's Montreal Center of Expertise (CEIMIA) (Canada)

    6. Lourdes Martinez Villaseñor, Ph.D in Computer Science, Universidad Panamericana (Mexico)

    7. Ravit Dotan, Director, CAIR Lab, The University of Pittsburgh & Self-employed (United States)

    8. Triveni Gandhi, Responsible AI Lead, Dataiku (United States)

    9. Usha Jagannathan, Data & AI Innovation Leader, McKinsey & Company (United States)

    10. Veronique Tremblay, Data Scientist - Responsible AI lead, Beneva (Canada)

    11. Yukun Zhang, Director, AI Governance and Responsible AI, ATB Financial (Canada)

  8. AI for Good - ESG AI Leader of the Year

    1. Andrea Ruotolo, Global Head, Customer Sustainability / ESG, Rockwell Automation (Canada)

    2. Emileigh Harrison, PhD Student, University of Chicago (United States)

    3. Jen Carter, Global Head of Technology, Google.org (United States)

    4. Kate Arthur, CEO, Digital Moment (Canada)

  9. AI for Good - DEI AI Leader of the Year

    1. Cristina Elena Martinez Pinto, Founder and CEO, PIT Policy Lab, PIT Policy Lab (Mexico)

    2. Gaone Matshameko, Data for Equity Strategy Manager, City of Toronto (Canada)

    3. Gloria Felicia, COO, Co-founder of Speedify.ai, Speedify.ai (United States)

    4. Ife Adebara, Ph.D Candidate, University of British Columbia (Canada)

    5. Kim Dressendoerfer, Account Technical Leader - Data & AI Expert, A Woman in AI (United States)

    6. Laura Montoya, CEO, President, Accel AI Institute / LatinX in AI (LXAI) (United States)

    7. Marissa McNeelands, Founder and CEO, Toast Consulting Inc (Canada)

    8. Shingai Manjengwa, Head of AI Education, ChainML (Canada)

    9. Taniya Mishra, CEO and Founder, SureStart (United States)

    10. Teodora Szasz, Senior Data Scientist, Philips Research North America (United States)

    11. Wendy Gonzalez, CEO, Sama (United States)

    12. Zahra Nazari, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Alberta (Canada)

  10. Women in AI Volunteer of the Year Award

    1. Cathy Ong Ly, PhD. Student, University of Toronto and National Marketing Lead, Women in AI Canada (Canada)

    2. Chelsea Squires, Senior Manager, Data Science, ATB (Canada)

    3. Ivete Sanchez-Bravo, Master in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Research Center in Mathematics (Mexico)

    4. Ja'Nya Jenoch, Ph.D., Founder & Visiting Assistant Professor, Women in AI | RHCS (United States)

    5. Maria de la Paz Rico Fernandez, Computer Vision Research Engineer, aifi (Mexico)

    6. Nalini Garg, AI & Data Leader, Deloitte Consulting (United States)

    7. Nammi Sriharan, Sr. Manager, Metrolinx and Toronto City Lead, Women in AI (Canada)

    8. Samantha Delfín Azuara, Data Engineer, Teradata (Mexico)

    9. Sepideh Bahadoripour, Master's Student, University of Calgary (Canada)

    10. Seynabou Ndiaye, Software Developer and Montreal city lead for WAI, Sama (Canada)

    11. Sunny Zhang, Founding Partner, Born Global Ventures (United States)

    12. Zulema Estrada, General Manager, Humind Care, (Mexico)

Join us in celebrating these 103 phenomenal women who are revolutionizing the AI industry and shaping the future of technology at the in-person award ceremony in Toronto.

A hearty shout out to the executive organizing team with that includes members from the steering committee; Alessandra Sala (Director of AI, Shutterstock// Global President of Women in AI), Bhuva Shakti (Founder & CEO, Wallet Max // Chief Ethics & Culture Officer, Women in AI), Frincy Clement (Principal Data Scientist, ADP // WAI Canada Ambassador), Susan Verdiguel (WAI Mexico Ambassador).

What is Women in AI?

Women in AI (WAI) is a global network of female experts and professionals in the field of Artificial Intelligence working towards inclusive AI that benefits a global society. Through empowerment, knowledge and active collaboration, WAI has grown into a recognized global platform of 12000+ members across 140+ countries with over 200 volunteers and led by prominent and influential women in Artificial Intelligence.


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