2017 Recipients of the Ada Lovelace Awards
Kesha Williams
COMPUTER ENGINEERING RECIPIENT
Kesha Williams is an award-winning software engineer, machine learning practitioner, and technical instructor at A Cloud Guru with 25 years’ experience. She's trained and mentored thousands of Java software engineers in the US, Europe, and Asia while teaching at the university level. She routinely leads innovation teams in proving out emerging technologies and shares her learnings at conferences across the globe. She's spoken about machine learning on the TED stage as a winner of TED’s Spotlight Presentation Academy. Additionally, her pioneering work in the field of artificial intelligence earned her the distinction of both Alexa Champion and AWS Machine Learning Hero from Amazon. In her spare time, she writes Java and ML news for InfoQ, co-organizes the NW Atlanta AWS Meetup, and mentors women in tech through her online social & professional networking platform, Colors of STEM.
Sevetri Wilson
TECH FOUNDER RECIPIENT
Sevetri is a leader in communications, public policy and technology .
Her work and that of her clients has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, and ESPN to name a few. In 2010, Sevetri's work received the National Nobel Prize for Public Service, The Jefferson Award. The program curriculum and design she created and implemented was featured in the U.S. Senate's report to the White House on volunteerism in the country.
In the same year, Sevetri received a proclamation from New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, and was further recognized by the U.S. Senate for her work on behalf of first generation college students.
Sevetri is a 40 under 40 recipient and was named the 2013 Business Woman of the Year by the La Legislative Women's Caucus.
She is driven by the notion that businesses can be successful and "do good" too. After all it is what led her to found Solid Ground Innovations, LLC, a full service strategic communications, management and consulting firm. SGI's services include branding, digital media, marketing and advertising, public relations, public policy and technology.
In 2016, Sevetri launched a tech-start up, Exempt Me Now, a spin off company from a dated SGI service line. Exempt Me Now is a web based subscription platform for tax exempt entities .
Mariana Williamson
STEM EDUCATOR RECIPIENT
Mariana Williamson is an experienced engineer and leader in directing strategic, lean, and detailed plans with stakeholders and assuring all processes are safely and efficiently executed according to company criteria. Skilled at leading Integrity Management programs. Adept at driving continuous improvement and innovation through team engagement and influencing stakeholders. Excellent written and verbal communication skills and cross-cultural collaboration. Experience with process improvement and engineering in a manufacturing environment.
Adele Tiblier
DIGITAL MARKETING RECIPIENT
Adele Bienvenu Tiblier has been working in the Internet industry since 1994. She fell into the search engine marketing (SEM) world while working for a regional ISP. During the infancy of the Internet, she was sought by a national online hotel booking site to handle all internet marketing. Within the first 6 months she increased traffic by more than 300%. From there she expanded her knowledge to include Online PR, served as moderator for the Online Ads Discussion Board (one of the first Internet boards regarding online advertising), and as a featured speaker on SEM at national conferences. Her knowledge and expertise of marketing has served the tourism, technology, retail and non-profit sectors, among others.