CW board member Sylvia Lu wins the Tech Star award at DevelopHER awards

What are the DevelopHER Awards?

The DevelopHER Awards are an annual, not for profit awards ceremony recognising women who work in the technology sector in East Anglia.

The awards were inspired by the team based at the Norwich SyncDevelopHer, who run regular meet-ups, hosting female role models speaking about their experiences in tech and encouraging more women to join an ever-growing community.

The DevelopHER awards aim to raise the profile of women in technology in East Anglia, creating role models to inspire the next generation to become developers, technicians, project managers, testers and digital experts. 

This year's awards were held on the 29th of November at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.

The 2017 awards categories

This year, there were 15 awards with sponsors including Google, University of East Anglia and EposNow. The awards were:

• Agile Angel Award: Nominations included those who lived and breathed agile and/or amazing scrum/master project managers. This award was won by Andrea Jelley, Wheatley Solutions.
• Apprentice Award: Nominations included those who prove that you don't need to be a graduate to excel in the tech world. This award was won by Hannah Jones, Absolute Digital Media.
• Best Newcome Award: Nominations included newcomers who have really exceled over the past year. This award was won by Catherine King, Crafted.
• Digital Marketer Award: Nominations included those who had done fantastic jobs in marketing a digital product. This award was won by Zhanna Askarova, Crafted.
• Emerging Talent Award: Nominations included those who were destined to go far. This award was won by Emily Godden, Audit Chaos.
• Entrepreneur Award: Nominations included female entrepreneurs who had really driven their company off the ground! This award was won by Nikita Hari, University of Cambridge.
• Eye for Design Award: Nominations included those who had a sharp eye for design. This award was won by Chiara Aliotta, Until Sunday.
• Game Developher Award: Nominations included those who exceled in the game devloping world. This award was won by Jodie Azhar, Creative Assembly.
• Innovation Award: Nominations included those who had come up with an innovative idea for a product. This award was won by Gabriela Gallegos Garrido, London South Bank Innovation Centre.
• Inspiration Award: Nominations included those who were massive inspirations amongst the tech community. This award was won by Hazel Cottrell, Creative Content Company.
• Tech Star Award: The Tech Star award celebrated the achievements of amazing developers and software engineers in the tech community. This award was sponsored by recruitment agency Cooper Lomaz. This award was won by Sylvia Lu, U-Blox.
• Tester Award: Nominations included those who were key players in the tech testing world. This award was won by Kaye Blundell, Wheatley Solutions.
• Unsung Hero Award: Nominations included those who may not be in the limelight often, but does an exceptional job everyday - The ones who deserved some recognition. This award was won by Frida Tveit, Softwire.
• User Experience Award: Nominations included those who listened to their users and made the user experience of their website(s) top notch! This award was won by Jenny Cham, EMBL-EBI.
• The DevelopHER Award: The overall winner from all the above categories went on to win the DevelopHER award, which was picked by their partner sponsor, Redgate. This award was won by Hazel Cottrell.

A summary of the evening

Hosted in the heart of Cambridge, at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on the 29th of November, the evening was attended by hundreds of industry professionals. Our CCO Abhi Naha attended along with fellow board member Faye Holland and both described the evening  as a fantastic event which sucessfully celebrated the achievements of women in the tech industry. 

With event brochures for each attendee, (which included complimentary biographies for each nominee), delightfully decorated tables and goody-bags with freebie's from each award sponsor, the awards proved to be a spectacular way to celebrate inspirational women in the tech industry.

Everyone in attendance seemed to be in great spirits in the beautifully decorated venue, with the Twitter hashtag #DevelopHERAwards blowing up! 

Sylvia and the Tech Star Award

In her nomination submission form, Faye detailed Sylvia's achievements throughout the years, such as becoming one of CW's first female board member, (alongside Faye) and being named as one of the best women in engineering by Silicon Republic.

With over ten years industry experience in wireless communication R&D, technology standards and innovation, Faye felt that Sylvia was the right candidate to be awarded the Tech Star Award...and so do we!

Unfortunately, Sylvia was unable to make the night due to a work trip, so Abhi was there on hand to bring home the trophy! Upon receiving the news that she had won the ward, Sylvia had this to say:

I am really grateful to have the opportunity to be working with a group of world class engineers on defining the next generation wireless systems and global standards that really matter to our life, including IoT, connected cars, high precision positioning and 5G. Among the group of engineers, there are a few women engineers too. I want to say that the tech industry is not just for men, women can also have high impact positions in the tech industry and add value to our society. Our inner voice is as good as our male colleagues. Just go for it, for the good of our society and the world. Remember - results have no gender.

One of the judges for the Tech Star Award, Simon Brown, (Managing Director at Cooper Lomaz), gave us his reason as to why Sylvia was chosen to win the award:

[...] the reason for picking Sylvia was her combined commitment to demonstrating a proven and experienced background academically, within industry whilst also mentoring and sharing best practice with others. This experience combined with the wide ranging areas of expertise she has worked across made Sylvia a high level all round candidate.

We're extremly proud of Sylvia for winning the award and for all of her achievements and we can not wait to see what she achieves in the new year. 

To find out more about the awards ceremony, click here.