Canberra women working in the male-dominated technology sector were lauded on Friday night at the Women in ICT awards.
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Five awards were presented on the night, including the WICked Woman of the Year Award, at a ceremony at the QT Canberra.
Women in ICT president Tara Searle said the awards played a small part in a bigger goal - to boost the representation of women in information and communications technology.
"The awards are all about allowing women to take centre stage and be celebrated for their achievements and talent in the ICT industry," she said.
"We want Canberra's women in tech to be seen, heard, recognised and rewarded.
"But we also want men to be a part of our mission in boosting the representation of women in ICT and championing their success."
The winners were:
WICked Woman of the Year Award
Dr Michelle Graham (Department of Home Affairs)
WIC Defying Gravity Award
Chelsea Abel (ServiceNow)
Emily Mills (Pragma Partners)
WIC Male Champion of Change Award
Mike Webb (Commonwealth Treasury)
WIC Student Encouragement Award
Emma Alfonso (Dickson College)
Raw Magic Award
Roopali Blowria (Canberra Institute of Technology)
The winner of the main award, Dr Graham, is the chief architect and assistant secretary for architecture, design and security at Home Affairs. Her responsibilities include cyber security and financial operations for cloud.
Federal Labor Member for Canberra Alicia Payne was also announced as WIC's patron for the next two years.
While the technology sector is a male-dominated industry, new statistics show the number of women working in ICT is growing.
According to the Australian Computer Society's Digital Pulse 2022 report, women made up 31 per cent of the technology workforce in 2021, an increase of 1.86 percentage points from the previous year.
