Women in Digital Awards

Our flagship Women in Digital Awards is the only program of its kind – celebrating role models, opening doors and creating visibility that drives real career momentum.

2025 Winners

2025 Finalists

Since 2018 we have championed over 119 award winners, 511 finalists and 3,118 nominees in their career, and we’re just getting started.

This awards program is run in collaboration with a range of incredible partners, industry leaders, and the Australian digital community which rallies around this program year on year to see more incredible humans receive the recognition they deserve.

Our nomination and entry process is quick, easy and creates greater awareness of professional accomplishments – in fact 88% of nominees rate greater belief in their abilities after completing their entry.

The shortlisting and judging process is undertaken with impartial industry leaders and culminates in an evening of celebration at our annual Women in Digital Awards Gala.

Women in Digital National Award Categories

Please note that these categories are subject to change each year.

AI Leader of the Year

This award recognises AI leaders within scaling, large organisations and enterprises who have driven the development and adoption of AI products or initiatives at scale, delivering meaningful and measurable impact.

Allyship in Action (Manbassador)

This award celebrates an impact-driven individual who actively champions gender equity by using their influence to support, advocate for, and elevate others, thus demonstrating true Allyship in Action within the digital industry.

Business Support Excellence

This award recognises an individual or team delivering excellence in business support functions that enable and accelerate digital outcomes. Whether through operations, finance, legal, people and culture, project management, or any other enabling function, this award celebrates those who work behind the scenes to make great digital work possible.

Champion of Change

This award celebrates an impact-oriented individual who is driving meaningful change within the digital industry, whether through innovation, leadership, advocacy, or transforming the way organisations use technology.

Cloud & Infrastructure Excellence

This award recognises an individual or team delivering excellence in cloud and infrastructure engineering that underpins and accelerates digital outcomes. Whether through cloud architecture, DevOps, platform engineering, site reliability, security, or network infrastructure, this award celebrates those who build and maintain the foundations that make great digital products and services possible.

Cybersecurity Leader of the Year

This award recognises the importance of cybersecurity and governance to keep us safe online by celebrating a dedicated and innovative cybersecurity professional. This is an individual contributor category recognising Australia’s best female cybersecurity leaders driving innovation, strengthening resiliency, and influencing industry change.

Data Leader of the Year

This award recognises a distinctive business leader who has built a revolutionary data-centric program while guiding the project (and associated teams) to outstanding achievement through vision, inspiration, creativity, and commitment.

Digital Experience Excellence

This award recognises an individual or team delivering excellence in digital experience - spanning user experience, customer experience, service design, and the end-to-end journeys that connect people with products, services, and organisations.

Digital Transformation Leader of the Year

This award recognises a distinctive business leader driving the transformation of an organisation through digital technology. For this category, we are looking for exceptional change, project and stakeholder management from the Digital Transformation Leader.

Employer of the Year

Executive Leader of the Year

Awarded to Australia’s most outstanding executive leader in the digital sector, this category recognises the importance of leadership in driving digital transformation in Australia and across an organisation and industry.

Global Impact Excellence

This award celebrates the organisations and teams driving Australia's influence on the global digital stage, from scale-ups expanding into new markets to teams within larger organisations leading cross-border initiatives.

Growth Leader of the Year

This award combines what was previously recognised as Digital Marketer of the Year with broader growth disciplines including sales leadership and growth strategy, reflecting the increasingly interconnected nature of these functions in modern organisations. Whether your work is rooted in data-driven marketing, brand building, revenue growth, or customer lifecycle strategy, this award celebrates those who drive meaningful and measurable growth outcomes through digital.

Indigenous Leader of the Year

This award acknowledges First Nations voices are imperative in helping to build the technology we all use every day, but they are also uniquely placed to use technology to solve problems that are specific to their community including preserving language and culture for future generations.

IT Excellence

This award recognises an individual or team delivering excellence across the breadth of information technology — from infrastructure and systems administration, to IT service delivery, security, support, and the operational backbone that keeps organisations running and evolving.

Product Excellence

This award celebrates the best of Australia's talent in Product Excellence. From Product Analysts, to Product Owners and Product Managers and Product Leaders - this individual or team is delivering exceptional commercial results through product strategy, leadership, stakeholder management and more.

Public Sector Excellence

This award recognises excellence in digital transformation by an individual or team, and the critical importance of effective digital capabilities within our public sector and government organisations. This award recognises the year's most successful transformation of a government organisation or its service delivery through digital technology.

Rising Star of the Year

Recognising Australia's Rising Star in digital and technology. This award recognises an ambitious innovator who has demonstrated an outstanding level of initiative and leadership as a digital specialist early in their career.

Software Engineering Excellence

This award recognises an individual or team who has shown industry leadership in building and developing software. Achievements in software development completed in the Australian market during the 25/26 Financial Year will be assessed for this award.

Technical Leader of the Year

This award champions someone that leads the successful delivery of high-performing technology applications (or projects) and as a result, enhances commercial outcomes for an organisation.

FAQs

Can I really self-nominate for an award?

Yes, you must!

Don’t be shy, visit our Women in Digital Awards Portal to nominate for a category. By nominating you’ll not only be recognising your own achievements, you’ll also be inspiring other young women to pursue a career in digital.

Can men attend this event?

Yes absolutely! We love having male champions of change attend our events whether that’s in person or online. Our community is pro-diversity and pro-equality… approximately 30% of our community is made up of male champions of change #Manbassadors.

How can I nominate for an award?

To nominate, head to our Women in Digital Awards Portal >>> https://awards.womenindigital.org/awards.

While you are here, you can also:

Sign up for our newsletter so you never miss any important community and Awards-related updates. Click here to subscribe.
Come along and cheer the finalists on at our Awards Gala.

What is the cost of nominating?

To continue growing and elevating the Women in Digital Awards, we’ve introduced a nomination fee of $199 per nomination. This change will help us expand the program, create more meaningful opportunities for finalists and winners, and deliver an unforgettable experience on the night.

But here’s the good news… Women in Digital Members receive one free nomination as part of their membership benefits! Already a member? You can find your exclusive discount code in the Member Portal. Not a member? Sign up today!

I know an incredible woman in digital, can I nominate some else for an award?

Absolutely!

Please visit our Women in Digital Awards Portal to nominate as many women and/or organisations as you like for an appropriate category.

What past winners say

“Thank you so much for the wonderful recognition at the Women in Digital Awards. I just wanted to say how wonderfully organised the Awards were, it was a really great night. I’ve run a number of Awards programs in my career and I thought the night and the Awards process was wonderfully run. Well done to you and your team!”

Shenal-Harakh-_-2023-Women-in-Digital-Awards-Winner-1-160x160

“After winning the award I felt recognised in a way that I haven’t before. It was really refreshing to feel seen especially since I’ve been creating my own path for so long and it often felt lonely. My award has been a great talking point to raise awareness about women in tech, and it is often brought up when I run mentoring sessions, and an added bonus is being able to share the work of the other amazing winners too!”

"This commendation has been a moment of reflection and redirection for me. The attention that winning the award brought really allowed me to see the scale of what I had accomplished in this 10 year journey, particularly with media outlets reaching out to me to tell that story. In seeing what I have been able to do, and what exists today from all of that work, I’m looking for the next challenge out there that I can put my mind to to continue to grow the scale of impact I make on the women in tech community.”

“Following the awards I’ve had many people reach out to me on Linkedin and other professional networking organisations for mentoring support, keynote speaking events and I was even interviewed on a podcast! These opportunities would have been out of reach if it had not been for the recognition associated with these awards and connections that I made through WiD.”

“The Women in Digital Awards has driven awareness about my career and endeavours! I have received a number of speaking invitations to multiple national conferences and have spoken in front of hundreds of industry leaders. I’ve had the opportunity to increase my reach which has strengthened my position in the Australian technology community.”