Penny Collins, President & CEO-Women in Technology- Atlanta Hawks Forever 404 Honoree presented by Sharecare

Penny Collins, WIT President & CEO has been recognized as a Forever 404 Honoree. The Forever 404 Honoree Award celebrates partners and non-profit organizations that embody cause, culture and community throughout the city of Atlanta and its rooted history.

Penny Collins is the President and CEO of Women In Technology (WIT) responsible for the execution of WIT’s strategy while delivering program and events to promote increasing the number of women and girls in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math). WIT empowers girls and women to excel in STEAM from the classroom to the boardroom by providing female students in middle school, high school and college with education, exposure and experience. By sharing the stories of successful professionals across the STEAM fields, WIT encourages all generations of girls and women to write their future.

Penny Collins is an experienced multifunctional global technology and business executive with a demonstrated history of building enterprise scale solutions to meet business and technical challenges. She has extensive experience in IT leadership building high performance teams and driving transformational initiatives across multiple industries. Penny has exceptional talent for understanding complex business problems and leading crossfunctional teams in the development of innovative and effective solutions while maintaining focus on the overall strategic business plans. Penny brings a wealth of experience working across many functional areas and is a thought leader and strategic thinker who is sought after by organizations to challenge the status quo, establish effective organizational structures, and deliver innovative solutions to drive business effectiveness growth.

Penny has a track record of building partnerships from board members to company directors and motivating teams across all levels of the organization. Prior to joining WIT, Penny was the Chief Technology Control Officer for First Data Corporation, Global Lead for Application Disaster Recovery and Head of Global Cyber Security and Controls PMO for the CEO. In addition to all these roles, she served as the global leader for First Data’s Women’s Leadership Council and a solid champion for the organization’s diversity and inclusion programs. Prior to First Data, Collins spent time as a business owner and entrepreneur, was Chief Process and Usability Officer for British Telecom (BT) and has spent her career leading global technology teams.

Penny was named as Atlanta Magazine’s 500 Most Powerful Leaders in Atlanta, is the recipient of the Atlanta Magazine’s 2023 Women Making A Mark Award and the recipient of the 2023 Atlanta Hawks’ Forever 404 Honors Award. She was named by Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan as one of 15 Outstanding Women in Leadership in 2020. Penny also received the United States Women in Payments’ Award in Education in 2019, a 2021 TechBridge Bill Bolling Non-Profit Leader Award Nominee, honored in 2022 by Synchronicity Theatre for her work to uplift the entire community and was recognized by Sheltering Arms as their 2022 Nonprofit Partner of the Year. She is an active member of Kiwanis Club, Atlanta’s non-profit community and is listed in Marquis Whos’ Who in America.