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 →