Announcing the 2025 finalists for VentureBeat Women in AI Awards

With VentureBeat’s flagship event, VB Transform, just around the corner, we are excited to announce the finalists for the 7th annual Women in AI Awards. The winners will be announced during a special program on the main stage of Transform on Wednesday, June 25 at 4 p.m. PT.

VB Transform is a premier two-day event on June 24-25 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Industry experts and peers will gather to provide comprehensive insights and best practices on what’s actually working in enterprise AI—from copilots to agents. Attendees will have numerous opportunities to forge meaningful connections and expand their networks.

As part of this event, VentureBeat will honor women leaders and changemakers in AI during the in-person sessions. The award categories include Responsibility and Ethics of AI, AI Entrepreneurship, AI Research, AI Mentorship and Rising Star.

The public submitted the nominees, and a VentureBeat committee will choose the winners. The selection criteria include the nominees’ commitment to the industry, efforts to increase inclusivity in the field and their positive influence on the community. 

Investing in women in AI will create more valuable AI that better suits audiences, and boosts ROI for companies. The impact has never been more clear, or more important, and we’re proud to recognize leaders in AI who are making an impact.

This award will honor a woman who has started companies showing great promise in AI. Consideration will be given to things like business traction, the technology solution and impact in the AI space.

• Elnaz Sarraf, CEO and founder at ROYBI
• Natalya Lopareva, CEO and founder at Algorized
• Ouafae Karim, engineer and funder at AFRICA-EO-SERVICES (AFEOS)
• Francessca Vasquez, vice president of professional services and generative AI innovation center at AWS
• Val Vacante SVP of solutions innovation at Dentsu

This award will honor a female leader who has helped mentor other women in the field of AI, providing guidance and support and/or encouraging more women to enter the field of AI.

• Sandra Brown, deputy general counsel at SoftBank Robotics America, Inc.
• Suruchi Shah, engineering manager, model serving team at LinkedIn
• Parul Bhandari, global head telco, media and gaming partner strategy at Microsoft
• Reut Lazo, Founder at Women X AI
• Nicole Carignan, SVP of security and AI strategy, field CISO, at Darktrace

This award will honor a woman who has made a significant impact in an area of research in AI, helping accelerate progress either within her organization, as part of academic research or impacting AI.

• Lindsay Richman, CEO at Innerverse AI
• Payel Das, principal research scientist and manager at IBM Research – T.J. Watson Research Center
• Suma Kumaraswamy, senior director, head of OMB Digital Products Innovation at First Tech Federal Credit Union
• Ann Irvine, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Resilience
• Hannaneh Hajishirzi, senior director of NLP at AI2; Torode Family Associate Professor in the Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington at Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2); and University of Washington

This award will honor a woman who demonstrates exemplary leadership and progress in the growing hot topic of responsible AI.

This award will honor a woman in the beginning stage of her AI career who has demonstrated exemplary leadership traits.

We’d like to congratulate all of the women who were nominated to receive a Women in AI Award. Thanks to everyone for their nominations and for contributing to the growing awareness of women who are making a significant difference in AI.

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