On 30 November 2017 at BeCentral in Brussels, the Digital Leadership Institute and its partners welcomed over two hundred key stakeholders and community members to celebrate the fifth edition of the European Ada Awards and to share the success stories of the 2017 Digital Brusselles project with support from the Digital Belgium Skills Fund. The Ada Awards are a long-standing pledge to the European Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition that recognise top European girls and women in tech and the organisations that support them.
Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, opened the evening with a warm thank you to DLI supporters, followed by keynote presentations from Ms. Céline Vanderborght, Brussels Region Smart City Manager and Ms. Andrea Almeida Cordero, Member of Cabinet for Ms. Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for the Digital Single Market. Both speakers committed their support and that of their stakeholders to active engagement of girls and women for fulfilling the vision of an inclusive digital Europe. A subsequent tweet about the event by Commissioner Gabriel was very well received on Twitter.
Opening presentations were succeeded by graduation of over sixty participants from the 2017 Digital Muse After School program with Ms. Valentina Cala DLI Digital Creative Manager, and from the first-ever cohort of the CYPRO “First Steps” program with Ms. Mai Ensmann, DLI CYPRO Coordinator.
- Ms. Katja Legisa, Digital Brusselles Director, then recognised 200-plus participants of the 2017 “Female Digital Starters” training program, followed by an inQube / Digital Brusselles project pitching session hosted by Ms. Lama Jaghjougha, a founder of Raise Women’s Awareness Network – RWAN. Initiatives presented included those launched in the context of inQube Move It Forward events over the past two years, including:
- Brussely – a platform by/for/about Brussels Generation Y-ers, presented by Ms. Safia Bihmehdn
- MESS – a gamified concert-going platform for Brussels citizens, presented by Ms. Alexandra Pykacz & Ms. Edith Euan
- MIA – a virtual innovation space for Brussels citizens, presented by Ms. Muna Ibrahim
- African Gist – an African tech internship program, presented by Ms. Cynthia Mukendy
- Tabadoul – a professional mentorship program for women refugees led by ENoWM and DAW, presented by Ms. Sinem Yilmaz
A particularly moving moment of the evening came about when, as part of her pitch for the Brussely platform, Ms. Safia Bihmehdn read a poem she composed about her participation in the Move It Forward for Women in Media event, which as the poem describes, inspired her toward a whole new direction in digital entrepreneurship and in celebrating the youth and diversity of Brussels.
The final highlight of the evening was the 2017-18 European Ada Awards, launched with inspiring keynote presentations by Ms. Dinah Barret, Senior Solutions Architect for EMEA at Amazon Web Services, and Ms. Gabriela M. Juric, 2016 European Digital Girl of the Year, and co-hosted by Ms. Miller and Ms. Loredana Bucseneanu, DLI Strategy Officer.
2017-18 European Ada Award trophies were presented by Ms. Simone Hume of Amazon Web Services in the following categories and announced by noted Ada Award partner representatives:
1. Ms. Pascale Van Damme, Vice President and General Manager at Dell EMC Commercial Belux, is 2017 European Digital Woman of the Year, as announced by Ms. Austeja Trikunaite, Secretary General of CEPIS.
2. 2017 European Digital Girl of the Year honours were awarded in the following age categories:
15-17 Year Old Category, as announced by Ms. Kiki Walravens, GSMA:
Maeve Galvin (Ireland)
11-14 Year Old Category, as announced by Mr. Laurent Roux, Impact Officer at European Institute of Technology:
- Aoibheann Mangan (Ireland)
- Charlotte Johnson (United Kingdom)
10 Years and Under Category, as announced by Ms. Tomislava Recheva of European Schoolnet:
- Helena Staple (United Kingdom)
- Zara Ilyas (Ireland)
- Ruby Scott Kenny (Ireland)
3. Teen-Turn of Ireland is 2017-18 European Digital Impact Organisation of the Year Award, as announced by Ms. Michela Palladino, Director of European Policy at Developers Alliance.
The 2017-18 European Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles celebration concluded with a reception catered by From Syria With Love, an organisation led by recent Syrian women refugees to Belgium that Digital Brusselles is honoured to support.
The Digital Leadership Institute and Digital Brusselles would like to thank the speakers, judges, partners and sponsors of the 2017 European Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles celebration, including the Digital Belgium Skills Fund, Amazon Web Services, European Institute of Technology, CEPIS, European Schoolnet, Edosoft, GSMA, Developers Alliance and BeCentral.
Congratulations to all the girls and women recognised by this year’s Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles celebration. We are looking forward to welcoming even more of you again next year!
Cat is a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, an Apple Distinguished Educator and a Google Certified Teacher. She initiated an event called Coding Evening for Teachers in UK that brings together teachers, coding professionals and tech enthusiasts and allows them to work together to discuss ideas for the classroom. Her independent work has led to her being invited to Brazil to train and speak to a number of Brazilian teachers about the importance of computational thinking and basic computer science skills. She is a role-model for young, female coders and a lot of her outreach work includes working with groups that are actively encouraging girls to get involved with coding, including girls-only CoderDojos in London.
When she started at Dell, Pascale was the only woman on the local leadership team. Tackling being female leader challenge in a positive way along with the learning experience is what motivated her to start building alliances to raise awareness around gender equality and bring about change. Pascale has been active for years in mentoring young women, speed-dating with students and coaching female entrepreneurs. She is a role model to women thinking about entering a career in the digital world and to those who have started a career within Dell. She regularly “talks the talk” and “walks the walk” regarding the skills needed for a career in tech, at high-level events such as the NATO’s annual cyber symposium NIAS where as a speaker she raised awareness around the need for female talent in cybersecurity along with diversity and inclusion in any future-oriented organization.
Egle inspires people of all ages to take part in the ICT industry through whatever means, despite any boundaries imposed by the society. She continuously shares her experience in breaking the industry’s boundaries through interviews and personal communication. Egle always emphasises that girls should not be afraid of the digital occupations, as she herself has made a successful transfer from a humanitarian background. Egle shares her experience and motivates women to partake in the fields of Computer Science – she has recently joined the Baltic Institute of Advanced Technology, which aims to create, develop and disseminate scientific knowledge and expertise about in the field of technology and innovation.
Teen-Turn works with companies throughout Ireland to cross the digital divide by providing hands-on work experience in technology career environments to teenaged girls from disadvantaged communities in order to address the industry’s social inclusion, gender disparity and skills shortage challenges.
Girls’ Day is an organization that invites technical enterprises, enterprises with technical departments and technical training facilities, universities, and research centres to present themselves at an open day for girls called Girl’s day.
The mission of the French group is particularly to thrive women into the technology sector and to encourage diversity in a traditionally male environment. StartHer organized many events throughout the years, either in the form of a mini-conference around a specific topic with people who work in the tech sector or through a Happy Hour of pure networking to facilitate trade within the networks.
Zara has attended 
Together with her good friend Zara, Ruby is a regular participant to the 
Aoibheann Mangan has been working hard promoting technology and coding for girls over the last number of years delivering workshops in her local education centre and school. She has been a mentor with 
Maeve has won her age category in the Tech Week Ireland Scratch competition for three years running. She is now a mentor teaching younger children Scratch in her local 