The Campus Club of the Year Award recognizes an official WIT Campus Club that has created meaningful opportunities for students to connect, develop skills, and build confidence and community in technology.
The 2026 WIT Awards winners will be announced October 22 at the Georgia Aquarium. See all 2026 finalists →
The Graduate Success Award recognizes a graduate of WIT’s Single Mothers’ Program who is thriving in her technology career, growing her skills, and delivering real results that show what is possible when determination meets opportunity. Here’s a closer look at this year’s three finalists.
Delilah Freeman is an AVP, Delivery Lead–Technology at Bank of America, where she supports Global Merchant & Payments Technology. After completing graduate studies and the WIT 2021 Cohort, Delilah transitioned into technology and was recruited by a cybersecurity firm. As a Technical Project Manager, Delilah applied her knowledge of information systems security to lead delivery efforts, coordinate stakeholders, and support technology outcomes. Over the past four years at Bank of America, Delilah has built a strong foundation in servant leadership, agile delivery, change management, risk mitigation, and strategy execution. She is known for maximizing team strengths, embracing opportunities for growth, and helping teams move work forward with structure, accountability, and collaboration. Her professional development includes earning PMP and Certified ScrumMaster certifications, and she continues to expand her impact across product delivery, release management, and cross-team execution.
Marilyn Scott is a Business Information Security Officer at Equifax, where she bridges the gap between business operations and security to drive compliance and risk mitigation. Her career accelerated following the 2021 Women in Technology (WIT) Single Mothers Program, where she was honored as a Single Mother of the Year Finalist. After the program, Marilyn secured a role at Equifax and quickly advanced to her current position through her distinguished performance.
Driven by lifelong learning, she earned industry credentials including CompTIA Security+, Google Cloud Digital Leader, and Generative AI Leader certifications. Marilyn holds an Associate in Cybersecurity with a Cyber Crime minor from Gwinnett Technical College, and is pursuing her Bachelor’s degree at Kennesaw State University.
Her journey exemplifies resilience and technical excellence. Deeply passionate about encouraging others, Marilyn stays grounded outside of work through her faith, running, and family time.
Shana N. Shell is a high-performing Technology Analyst and DevSecOps professional known for delivering secure, scalable, and data-driven solutions that drive enterprise transformation. She excels at embedding security into the software development lifecycle, leveraging automation, CI/CD pipelines, and advanced data engineering to improve system performance, reliability, and compliance.
With a strong foundation in business analysis and consulting, Shana translates complex challenges into actionable, high-impact technical strategies—enabling smarter decisions and measurable results. A continuous learner and innovation advocate, she stays at the forefront of DevSecOps, cloud technologies, and data platforms, consistently elevating the teams and organizations she supports.
The 2026 WIT Awards winners will be announced October 22 at the Georgia Aquarium. See all 2026 finalists →
The Early Career Excellence Award recognizes an early-career technology professional whose initiative, creativity, and investment in others significantly exceed what is typical at her stage. Here’s a closer look at this year’s three finalists.
Vivian Milender is a Product Manager II at Cox Automotive, where she supports innovation in the digital wholesale automotive marketplace.
A graduate of the Terry College of Business at University of Georgia, Vivian earned her BBA in Management Information Systems with an emphasis in Information Security. She began her career at Cox as a LEAD Analyst in the company’s flagship early career development program, quickly gaining hands-on experience in solving real-world challenges and delivering value to clients in a fast-paced, evolving industry as first a product owner and now a product manager of a highly visible, high growth and profitable product line. Vivian was recently nominated for an Innovator Excellence Award at Cox within her product and technology group.
Passionate about leadership, innovation, and community impact, Vivian is actively involved in Women In Technology (WIT), where she continues to champion opportunities for women in STEM.
Roshina Mohamed Rafee, Sr. Systems Engineer, Agentic Solutions at The Home Depot, where she leads engineering efforts at the intersection of personalization, AI infrastructure, and enterprise technology. She spearheaded the Component Selector expansion initiative — a critical personalization system powering homedepot.com, one of the largest retail websites in the U.S. with over 2.2 billion annual visits — enabling marketing teams to run large-scale A/B experiments that drive customer engagement and conversion. Roshina also owns the engineering infrastructure behind The Home Depot’s Gemini Enterprise AI platform, serving over 6,500 associates nationwide with secure access to enterprise-grade AI tools. Her work on access provisioning, agent sharing, and GCP infrastructure has been instrumental in scaling the company’s AI capabilities. Roshina is passionate about driving innovation and empowering teams through technology.
Nicole Rebolledo is a Project Manager in IT Governance at Ocean Bank and incoming Senior Analyst in IT Governance Operations at Southwire Company. At Ocean Bank, she leads enterprise AI governance initiatives at the intersection of technology, risk, and compliance, helping shape frameworks that enable responsible AI adoption in a regulated financial environment.
An MBA candidate at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, Nicole serves as a Student Ambassador and President of Scheller Pride and is a Dean’s List scholar. She began her career mentoring high-risk youth in behavioral health, bringing a distinctive human-centered lens to technology leadership. Her recognitions include FIU’s Researcher of the Year and a 2025 Young Professional of the Year nomination.
The 2026 WIT Awards winners will be announced October 22 at the Georgia Aquarium. See all 2026 finalists →
The Woman to Watch Award recognizes a mid-career leader in technology who has already delivered measurable results beyond her formal role, expanded her scope of influence over time, and made a deliberate, visible investment in advancing others. Here’s a closer look at this year’s three finalists.
Lalitha “Devi” Battina is the Enterprise API Practice Lead at Primerica, with over 28 years of experience delivering enterprise technology solutions across telecommunications, aviation, financial services, and enterprise platforms for organizations including Primerica, Delta, Cox, and Verizon. For the past six years at Primerica, she has led a 20+ person cross-functional team with full lifecycle ownership of a shared-services ecosystem supporting 300+ Kubernetes-hosted enterprise APIs — driving platform modernization, operational excellence, and engineering mentorship. Beyond her enterprise role, Devi founded Covenant (withcovenant.app), a platform helping women recognize, document, and understand the value of their financial, and household contributions, including a “Career Sacrifice” calculator. An AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Primerica’s internal WIT chapter lead, she is committed to mentorship, technical excellence, and using technology for lasting social impact.
Selma Dogic is Senior Director of Data and Analytics at Carter’s, Inc., where she leads the Analytics Center of Excellence, Business Intelligence, and AI Center of Excellence. Her work spans analytics strategy, data governance, machine learning, and enterprise AI enablement. Prior to Carter’s, she held analytics roles at The Home Depot and NCR. Selma is a contributing author of Analytics Interpreted and has served on the board of the Technology Association of Georgia’s Analytics & AI Society. She has spoken at industry conferences including DataConnect and is a mentor in the Women in Analytics community. She holds a Master’s in Economics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Stella Ihenacho is Team Lead of the RTE Organization for Red Hat’s Data & AI division, the first person appointed to this role. She leads RTE assignment strategy, talent alignment, and delivery coordination while driving Agile transformation across 200+ people in 20+ globally distributed teams delivering enterprise data platforms, AI solutions, and business intelligence products. With over a decade in enterprise technology, Stella has held progressive roles spanning program management, Agile coaching, team leadership, and organizational transformation. She is Co-Founder of NSTAR Technologies, helping 800+ professionals enter enterprise tech careers, and Co-Founder of the African Immigrant Collective and AIM Women’s Conference. Stella is a TEDx speaker, PMI Global Steering Committee member, and certified Leadership and Agile Coach. She holds an MBA, PSM II, PMI-ACP, and ICP-ACC.
The 2026 WIT Awards winners will be announced October 22 at the Georgia Aquarium. See all 2026 finalists →
The Enterprise Executive Impact Award recognizes executives who have delivered sustained, large-scale impact within a major or highly complex organization. Here’s a closer look at this year’s three finalists.
Arati Chavan is Vice President of Cyber Security at McKesson, where she leads with purpose to advance health outcomes for all , keeping patient safety at the core. A visionary leader with exceptional business acumen , she has lead multiple $100M+ cyber and technology transformation portfolios safeguarding a global healthcare ecosystem. With over two decades of experience across Fortune 50 companies such as Elevance Health , General Electric, Synchrony Financial, she has a proven track record of delivering large scale Digital and Cyber transformations. Known for building high-performing teams, mentoring next generation leaders , championing for Girls and Women in Tech. She also serves as National Chair of McKesson’s oldest ERG, advancing inclusion and belonging.Her impact has earned recognition as WIT Women of the Year Honoree (2025), Top 50 Women Leaders of Georgia and Technology (2023), and Impactful Cyber Executive, alongside her work mentoring with Girls Who Code and Women Who Code.
Naomi Lariviere is Chief Product Owner and VP of Product Management at ADP, where she leads ADP Workforce Now and Next Gen Payroll, products used by millions of employees and HR teams daily. With 20+ years across product management and technology, she operates at the intersection of AI, human capital management, and enterprise-scale product delivery. Naomi is a MIT Sloan Management Review panelist, Forbes Technology Council member, and vocal advocate for responsible AI design. She is deeply committed to mentorship and leadership development for women in technology and product management. Naomi holds master’s degrees in Business and Management from Webster University and has pursued advanced studies at Stanford University and MIT.
Missy Lawson, SVP of Technology, heads cyber, risk and business operations for Finxact, a division of Fiserv Inc, a global leader in technology and payments that enables commerce, banking and the safe and secure movement of money. Missy is accountable for the delivery and operational stability of technology enabling our businesses, achieving revenue realization through client implementations of our digital products, roadmap enablement, and delivery of strategic technology initiatives.
With 30 years of IT experience, Missy has been a Fiserv employee since February 2006. During that tenure she has served the company in a variety of Operations, Engineering, Architecture, and Merger & Acquisition roles, as well as Portfolio Delivery positions within Fiserv Technology Services.
An Expert Engineer at Fiserv, Missy is an active member of Women In Technology and Women we Admire and has been twice recognized as a Top 100 Women in Fintech by Fintech Magazine.
The 2026 WIT Awards winners will be announced October 22 at the Georgia Aquarium. See all 2026 finalists →
The Organizational Executive Impact award recognizes executives driving meaningful, measurable transformation within their organization, regardless of company size. Here’s a closer look at this year’s three finalists.
Caroline Cochran is the Chief People Officer at Candescent, the leading cloud-native digital banking platform serving 1,300+ U.S. banks and credit unions. She leads global people and talent strategy, driving employee engagement, talent development, and a high-performance organizational culture with a data-driven approach. Caroline’s career spans HR leadership, enterprise technology, and risk and compliance, including executive roles at QGenda and Secureworks, a Dell Technologies company. She serves as a Board Member & Executive Committee Member of the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) and is a graduate of the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.
Tasha S. McCall is VP, Payments & Agentic Commerce at Synchrony Financial, where she leads emerging payments product strategy, contributing to $6B+ in YTD sales toward a $12B digital payments portfolio goal. With more than 20 years in FinTech and financial services, including leadership roles at Fiserv, Worldpay, Truist Bank, Ceridian, CheckFree, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Chase, Tasha is a proven FinTech Digital Transformation executive who has launched 50+ products and enhancements and managed multi-million dollar P&Ls.
She holds degrees from Yale University, Columbia Business School, and Middlesex University, U.K. A dedicated champion for Women in Technology (WIT), Tasha serves as co-lead of Synchrony’s WIT partnership, securing ~$100K in overall WIT sponsorship.
Additionally, Tasha serves on the Leadership Perimeter Board developing impactful Atlanta community leaders through a focus on civic engagement and regional impact.
Jaga Saravanan, Chief of Technology Operations at MagMutual, is a senior technology executive with 25+ years leading enterprise transformation, reliability engineering, cloud modernization, and AI enablement across financial services, fintech, and healthcare insurance. She pairs deep technical expertise with strategic business leadership to drive innovation and growth.
At 24, she founded Vupusaki Software (Chennai, 1998; acquired 2013), built with a predominantly women technology team. At MagMutual, she led the enterprise SRE transformation reducing post-refresh defects 75%+ and burnout ~40% while governing 1,600+ annual production changes. At Bakkt, she lifted platform availability from 95% to 99.99% and CSAT from 78 to 88. She is a Georgia State Certified VEX coach and FIRST head coach (2017 VEX IQ World Excellence Award), an MIT Sloan AI alumna, and a community mentor advancing women through technology and the arts.
The 2026 WIT Awards winners will be announced October 22 at the Georgia Aquarium. See all 2026 finalists →
The WIT Awards puts a spotlight on women who are shaping the future of technology, and that spotlight does more than light up a room for one night. It tells the woman on stage and the thousands of women watching her story unfold that their work is valued, and that staying in tech is worth it.
That’s the real impact of the WIT Awards. It’s more than a gala. It’s visibility, and visibility leads to retention.
Women in Technology (WIT) exists to encourage, retain, and elevate women and girls across all industries and at any stage in their tech careers. The WIT Awards is where that mission becomes tangible. When a woman’s name is called, when her company fills a table to celebrate her, when her peers share her story, that recognition becomes part of her career momentum.
The data behind this is simple: Women don’t leave tech because they lack ambition or talent. They leave when the systems around them stall their growth and make their contributions invisible. The WIT Awards interrupt that pattern.By honoring the women who are building, leading, and staying in tech, the WIT Awards give them the recognition they deserve and remind companies why their success is worth investing in.
The women we recognize aren’t exceptions. They represent thousands of others just as capable and just as driven, who are simply less seen. When we put one woman’s name on a stage, we’re telling every woman in that room that she belongs there too.
This year’s celebration will be held at the Georgia Aquarium on October 22 from 5:30 pm to 9 pm ET, bringing together more than 600 executives, senior leaders, and innovators from across Georgia’s tech community.
The evening opens with an exclusive VIP reception from 5 pm to 6 pm, designed for deeper conversation and connection with honorees, partners, and executives before the main program begins. From there, guests will enjoy a seated dinner created by Wolfgang Puck’s culinary team, set against the backdrop of the Georgia Aquarium.
The night builds toward the awards ceremony itself, the true highlight of the evening, where this year’s honorees, finalists, and winners across categories from Woman of the Year to the Emerging Executive Award will be celebrated in front of the full room.
It’s a room full of people who want to see each other win. Tables are available now for companies ready to celebrate their team members and stand with the broader community of women building the future of tech in Georgia.
None of this happens without the companies who invest in it. WIT’s high-visibility partnership opportunities, including Presenting Partner, VIP Reception Partner, and Awards Spotlight Partner, put your company at the center of a night built around recognition, community, and momentum for women in tech.
Partnership with WIT is more than a sponsorship line item. It’s a strategic investment in the talent your company already has, and a direct line to the women shaping Georgia’s tech community. Partners are featured throughout the campaign leading up to the event and recognized live at the ceremony.
Interested in partnering with WIT for the 2026 WIT Awards? Contact partnerships@mywit.org to learn more about available opportunities.
The 2026 WIT Awards would not be possible without the companies who invest in making women in tech visible. We are grateful to the organizations showing up for this community.
The top tier. Your company’s logo on signage, the stage, and all promotions will visibly demonstrate your leadership in supporting women in tech careers, making your brand stand out in the community. If your company is committed to advancing women in tech, we would love to talk. Contact partnerships@mywit.org to learn more.
Interested in joining this list? Reach out to partnerships@mywit.org.
Tables are available now. Whether you’re celebrating a team member, building connections with Georgia’s tech leaders, or investing in the community helping women explore, pursue, persist, and lead in technology careers, this is the night to be in the room.
Reserve your table today here: https://witawards2026.givesmart.com/
Women in Technology (WIT) creates possibilities for more women to explore, pursue, persist, and lead in technology careers.
May Virtual WIT Forum | May 20 | 8–9 am ET | Virtual via Zoom
Most women in technology have done everything right. They’ve sought out mentors. They’ve raised their hands, made their work visible, and built their networks. And many have still found themselves stalling, watching peers advance while wondering what they’re missing.
The missing piece is rarely a matter of skill or effort. It is often sponsorship.
This May, Women in Technology (WIT) is bringing that conversation into the open.
The May Virtual WIT Forum, presented by Tier4 Group, goes beyond career advice to examine the advocacy relationships that actually change trajectories.
Sponsorship is not mentorship. It is not networking. It is someone with organizational power putting their credibility behind your readiness, saying your name in rooms you are not in, creating openings, and following through. For professionals navigating the path to leadership, access to that kind of advocacy is one of the most significant predictors of who advances and who plateaus.
Through candid conversations with leaders and practitioners, this forum will explore what sponsorship looks like in practice, why it is harder for women to access, what sponsors need from the people they champion, and how individuals and organizations can begin to close the advocacy gap.
This forum is designed for women and allies at every career stage, and for the leaders who are in a position to sponsor.
Whether you are actively looking for a sponsor, ready to step into the role of sponsor for someone else, or leading an organization that wants to build a more equitable path to advancement, this is a practical, honest conversation built for you.
Attendees can expect to leave with:
This forum is completely virtual and open to women and allies everywhere. You do not have to be in Atlanta, or anywhere in particular, to be part of this conversation.
One hour. Real talk. The kind of insight that moves careers forward.
This forum is made possible by the generous support of our partners.
A special thank you to our Presenting Partner, Tier4 Group, for their commitment to advancing women in technology and making conversations like this one possible.
We also extend our gratitude to our WIT Forum Partners:
Women in Technology (WIT) creates possibilities for more women to explore, pursue, persist, and lead in technology. Learn more at mywit.org.
