PCR Women of the Year 2016: Meet the judges

The judges for PCR Women of the Year 2016 – held on Friday October 14th at Sway Bar, London – have been confirmed.

A panel of 10 experts will debate and decide the winners across the award’s six categories (including the new Business Mentor and PR Powerhouse categories). 

The deadline for putting someone forward is end of play tomorrow (Wednesday July 20th), so you still have time to nominate yourself, a colleague, or anyone else from the PC and tech industry you think should be recognised for their achievements. You can read more details here – and nominate here.

Once the nominations period closes, PCR will publish the list of the finalists. The judges will then get together and decide the winners.

You can buy tickets for the awards and networking event here (priced at just £59 each), and for sponsorship enquiries please email Sarah Goldhawk.

– The Judges –

Charlie Le Rougetel, Big Top PR

Charlie Le Rougetel is the founder of indie comms agency Big Top. She has worked in PR for more than two decades and, despite operating in a wide range of industries, she has always had a toe in technology. In the early days she launched the Scottish Games Alliance and wrote for a publication called Software Echo. 15 years of video games PR followed, which saw her work for huge brands like Resident Evil and Capcom, THQ, NCSoft and Hasbro.

She has also managed comms campaigns for a whole host of tech events, including Gadget Show Live 2016, Wearable Technology Show, Legends of Gaming Live and Paris Games Week. She is currently spearheading PR for digital arts supremos Seeper and disruptive tech powerhouse Office Power among many others. 

Nancy Hammervik, CompTIA

As senior vice president, industry relations for CompTIA (the ICT industry’s global trade association), Nancy Hammervik is responsible for elevating the association’s public profile among its membership and across the ICT industry. She is the principal liaison between members and the association and acts as an advocate on behalf of members and the broader industry.

Prior to joining CompTIA in 2011, Nancy Hammervik had a 25 year career with CMP Media, working with IT Channel publications and eventually heading up their channel events business. Her event portfolio brought together leading executives in the high tech industry, including vendors, distributors, channel partners, retail organizations, CIOs and IT management. She also brought together IT buyers and sellers in Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe. During her tenure with at Everything Channel, Hammervik founded Channel@Work, a corporate charitable initiative that allows members of the high tech industry to give back to local communities.

She has been a tireless advocate for women in technology. She started Women of the Channel at CMP and the Advancing Women in IT Community at CompTIA.

Hammervik is a graduate of the University of Delaware, where she received a bachelor’s degree in marketing. She has received numerous industry awards and recognition, including CRN’s 2016 Women of the Channel. 

Rachel Gordon, Mad Catz

Having worked in the IT industry for almost 20 years in sales and marketing roles, Rachel has experienced the emergence of many varied technological advances including mobile and cloud tech, WiFi, fibre optic and 4k but non more groundbreaking than the recent eSports explosion.

Working for Mad Catz over the last seven years, she have witnessed the rapid growth of competitive gaming and been involved in all aspects of sponsorship, marketing and PR of many esports teams, individuals and events both in the UK and on a global scale.

Furthermore, she have also worked hard to expand the firm’s sponsorship and outreach strategy into the mainstream and helped introduce the industry to a larger lifestyle audience utilising popular vloggers and YouTubers via their social media vehicles.

In addition, she am responsible for co-ordinating and managing events and overseeing all branding and product launch aspects for the company’s three main brands: Mad Catz, Saitek & Tritton.

Mette Tripp, Context

 As Director of Channel Relations at CONTEXT, Mette Tripp is responsible for heading up the Channels Team which consists of Country Managers across the globe, all reporting to Mette. She is also a member of the CONTEXT Executive Team and reports directly to CEO Jeremy Davies. Having worked for over 15 years in the IT industry, Mette has considerable experience within this sector and in particular with the distribution channel. She currently works closely with IT distributors and resellers and retailers in UK, Nordics and across Europe. Her primary responsibility is to build and maintain the CONTEXT data panels that form the basis of all CONTEXT SalesWatch reporting.

Mette holds degrees from Anglia Ruskin University and University of West London and additionally studied for one year at Ruprecht-Karls Universität in Heidelberg, Germany. Mette is bi-lingual in Danish/English and speaks fluent German.

Megan Moore, GfK

Megan Moore, Business Group Director within the POS division at GfK, has over nine years’ experience working within the tech market. Megan heads up IT, Telecoms, Consumer Electronics, Photo, Office & Stationery working closely with leading global manufacturers, operators and retailers advising and consulting with them on market developments and future growth opportunities. Megan leads the development of the commercial activities across these six teams at GfK.

Megan’s history is in the Telecoms industry and was also was involved in developing Mobile Insights in the UK in 2014. Mobile Insights is an innovative business intelligence solution that integrates two powerful sources – Big Data usage metrics from mobile operators and GfK’s own curated consumer data. Megan is a specialist in multi/omni-channel strategies and is a frequent commentator at industry events.

Nova Smith, Best Tablet Company

In 2013, Nova established Direct E-Trading Ltd purely out of necessity during desperately difficult times. While on her holiday in Cyprus, her son was born extremely prematurely at just 25 weeks, leaving him fighting for his life. Having to spend two years in hospital in Cyprus and the UK where he remained in intensive care, Nova needed a way to support her family financially and noticed a clear gap in the market for reasonably priced tablets after realising she was unable to afford one herself.

With a £3,000 loan, she set out to find a reputable manufacturer in China and a design agency in the UK and after two trips to China, she was finally happy with the product to go to production. Now back in the UK, Nova trades on the company’s own website and Amazon, where the ‘IT tablet PC’ is ranked in the top 10 bestselling tablets despite only entering the market 18 months ago. Nova has now developed two further brands and is catering to customers in UK, Europe and America.

Nova’s personal experience and gratitude for having overcome her battles has led to corporate sponsorship with charity Bliss, which supports parents with premature or sick babies. The Bliss logo is displayed proudly on the packaging of her tablets and she is committed to donating a percentage of company profit to the charity.

Michelle McGeoch, Lenovo Technology UK

Michelle began her IT career over 25 years ago at Dell Computer Corp, where she held various sales and sales management roles. Michelle joined Lenovo Technology six years ago to help set up Lenovo’s UK Public Sector Sales team.

Michelle is an active member of WILL (Women in Lenovo Leadership) which is part of Lenovo’s global diversity program and aims to support the career development and profile of Women within IT both internally at Lenovo and externally.

Lisa Carter, Mimram Media

Lisa Carter is Director of Mimram Media, a media, PR and content marketing agency which works with clients based in the retail, tech, toys, video games and book publishing sectors.

In a former life, Lisa was a publisher at NewBay Media, home of PCR. There she launched video games trade titles MCV and Develop, toy industry title ToyNews, cycling industry bible BikeBiz and PCR itself. As well as overseeing the print and digital titles, she took those brands into the offline space, launching a series of affiliated awards, expo and conference events.

Sarah Shields, Dell UK

With over 20 years’ experience in managing direct and indirect sales teams, Sarah Shields is one of the UK’s leading experts in the technology industry. As one of three general managers for Dell in the UK, Sarah oversees Dell’s extensive commercial channel organisation.

Prior to joining Dell in 2008, Sarah has worked with big brands such as AMD, Packard Bell, Acer, Gateway and E-Machines. Sarah is a big supporter of Women in Technology and is an active member of various women-focused Government and Industry groups including the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur network. as well as being a working mum with two small children.

Abbey Bowen, Overclockers

Abbey Bowen joined IT Services at Keele University as an IT Advisor in 2016 having worked in the UK IT and gaming industry for the last 6 years. From 2012, she began working with Overclockers UK as a Sales Advisor, but quickly progressed into the role of a Systems Technician, building anything from budget PCs to high end water-cooled systems and received high praise for her abilities as a skilled worker. Whilst working with Overclockers, Abbey was nominated and went on to win PCR Rising Star in last year’s event.

Since joining the award winning IT Service Desk team, Abbey has made a number of improvements to documentation to ensure that the IT Service Desk team provide excellent support and service for both staff and students at Keele University. providing first line IT support to the staff and students of the university. 

Abbey is continuing to embrace the ever changing environment by increasing her knowledge of systems and services in the University and underpin the workplace knowledge by continuing her professional development this year by embarking on Higher National Certificate. 

Abbey currently lives in Newcastle-Under-Lyme and enjoys being able to spend her time in the beautiful picturesque campus of Keele University.

Who should win an award?

The deadline for putting someone forward is end of play tomorrow (Wednesday July 20th), so you still have time to nominate yourself, a colleague, or anyone else from the PC and tech industry you think should be recognised for their achievements. You can read more details here – and nominate here.

For more information on PCR Women of the Year 2016, visit the event website.