Rachael Waters, Gabe Marzano, and Crystal Ting Win at WIICTA Awards 2023 in Australia

ARN presented the 2023 Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA), which recognize female success in the technology channel.

The Innovation award goes to Crystal Ting, Gabe Marzano, and Rachael Waters. Rachael Waters is an expert at transforming concepts into workable solutions, and she used a novel hiring strategy to close the persistent IT skills gap. Cybersecurity advocate Gabe Marzano uses cooperation and activation to approach innovation. One of Pax8's first workers in the Asia Pacific region last year, Crystal Ting had to improve her abilities before creating a process to improve new hires as the company developed.

The market's top gender diversity and inclusion (D&I) awards programme was presented in front of more than 620 spectators at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Sydney, which was again the largest in-person audience ever. The entire Australian IT ecosystem came together under the ARN banner to set a new standard for female achievement and accomplishment.

From a pool of more than 148 organisations and more than 390 submissions, covering partner, telco, vendor, and distributor firms, 230 candidates were selected as finalists in total.

Following a thorough evaluation procedure, 23 winners in eight categories were chosen, along with 11 highly commended acknowledgements, by an executive panel of more than 170 professional experts.

The overall purpose of WIICTA is to support as many deserving women as possible through this special awards programme, in line with the overall objective of giving up-and-coming female talent in Australia a stage on which to shine.

Congratulations from ARN to all of our finalists, highly commended, and winners, stated ARN editor Julia Talevski. This is an encouraging illustration of the rich diversity of established and developing female talent in Australia.

Eight prizes including Innovation, Technical, Entrepreneur, Graduate, Rising Star, Shining Star, Achievement, and D&I Champion (Company and Individual) honours were given to the channel by WIICTA.

From recent graduates to seasoned CEOs, inspiring business leaders, innovative thinkers, and technical specialists, as well as talent moving through the ranks and consistently top performers, were all featured at various career levels. Individual and corporate proponents of D&I projects also agreed with this.