The winners of this year’s Digital NS Diversity Awards were honoured in Halifax on Monday at an event that celebrated achievements in widening participation in Nova Scotia’s ICT workforce.
Event organizer Digital Nova Scotia -- the industry association for the sector -- hosted the fourth annual event with the Centre for Women in Business at startup house Volta.
“Women still account for less than 25 percent of our industry. A diverse workforce provides a wealth of knowledge and perspectives and thereby accelerates and improves problem solving,” said Digital Nova Scotia President and CEO Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia in a statement.
“Most importantly, both diversity and inclusion will allow us to tackle our sector’s largest challenge – access to talent.”
This year’s winners were:
Power IT Up: Next Generation Leadership – Eilidh Lindsay-Sinclair
Lindsay-Sinclair is the Director of Operations at CloudKettle; a consultancy that specializes in optimizing revenue operations for B2B SaaS companies. Lindsay-Sinclair has helped the company grow from two people to over a dozen employees, helped it become a 1 percent company and built a recruitment program which includes a blind screening process for interview candidates. Lindsay-Sinclair founded and co-chairs Digital Skills for Women, a learning cohort aimed at increasing digital literacy. Lindsay-Sinclair is also a Techsploration mentor and connects with women looking to enter the technology field.
Women Leaders in the Digital Economy – Kim Scaravelli
Scaravelli is a digital strategist, content creator, instructional designer, and owner of Trust Communications. Working with corporations, non-profits, governments, and educational institutions, she has designed more than 300 online learning programs and provides digital strategy expertise to brands like Sport for Life Canada, Heart & Stroke Canada, and PCL Construction. In 2016, Scaravelli founded The Canadian Diversity Initiative, a social enterprise platform that presents online diversity and inclusion training from non-profits, including the Indigenous Leadership Development Institute, the Canadian LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce, and Safety Services Canada.
Diversity Champion of the Year – Dalhousie University Faculty of Computer Science
Through their WeAreAllCS initiative, the Faculty of Computer Science united leaders from education, industry, government and the student body to increase the number of incoming female students by 144 per cent in 2018. Dalhousie co-ordinated with partners in industry and Nova Scotia's K-12 system. They developed new curriculum and course delivery methods, created scholarship opportunities and peer mentorship programs and hosted a national conference for women in technology.
Digital Nova Scotia’s partnership with the Women in Communications and Technology means that all three award recipients will also be nominated for WCT’s own national annual awards program to be held in 2020.
