Meet the WIN Awards Finalists
Winners were announced live at the WIN Awards Gala on September 23, 2022 at Company in New York City.
INNOVATORS
LEADERS
Katie Skibinski, Chief Innovation Officer, Planned Parenthood Federation of America | WINNER
Katie is a seasoned digital executive—having worked at organizations like The New York Times and LinkNYC—applying her leadership to ensure reproductive healthcare. In her current role as Planned Parenthood’s Chief Innovation Officer, she oversees the national nonprofit’s portfolio of digital innovations. These include its flagship healthcare and education websites, online appointment scheduling tool, the period and birth control tracking app Spot On, and a live and AI chat product, Roo. In the face of ever-more abortion restrictions, Katie spearheaded an innovation program to support maximizing healthcare access, including abortion.
All together, Katie leads a team that serves 180 million users every year. She is responsible for investments in people and products that drive the organization’s strategic goals through digital and innovation. Some results of her work? A 600% increase in online appointment bookings and 200% increase in web traffic during her tenure.
Bansi Bhalla, Market Activation Operations Leader, Americas Innovation, EY
Bansi is an innovation accelerant. As one of the original architects of Americas Innovation for EY, she partners with EY teams and clients to harness the latest technology, business transformation, and innovation approaches. This has led to deepened innovation capabilities across EY and the various sectors they serve. One example: she led the development of “Transformation Realized,” a new offering helping corporate leaders adapt to emerging trends and evolve their businesses.
Under Bansi’s leadership, her team has grown to over 20 members and a sustained increase in sales. During her 14-year tenure at EY, she has consistently led the organization to launch initiatives that bolster its innovation offerings for EY and its clients.
Frederika de Courcy Arora, VP, Innovation Management, bp
There are few sectors in more urgent of a moment of transformation than energy. With new regulation and consumers living through pain at the pump and heatwaves at home, innovation is more critical than ever. Frederika leads high priority initiatives for bp, where she has launched and runs connected innovation programs that support customers and local markets. Just 14 months into her role as the VP of Innovation Management at BP, she’s proven her impact and scaled a team from a few people in the UK to 30+ members around the world.
Frederika’s fast growth showcases rare leadership skills, particularly as a change agent and influencer elevating innovation practices at one of the world’s largest multinational corporations.
RISING STARS
Inna Lobel, Design Director, Head of New York Industrial Design, frog | WINNER
Inna is an inventor—look no further than the numerous patents filed in her name during her tenure at companies like Apple and frog. As the current design director and head of industrial design for frog New York, her responsibilities include spearheading the design and development of award-winning products as well as providing startups with the vision and strategy to raise millions in funding.
An all-around design expert, she is able to lead projects from conceptualization through production and validation. One example: her work with the Series A startup Campfire, a hardware/software product for 3D, VR, and AR. She spearheaded this project from vision and positioning to hardware design and prototypes—allowing the Campfire team to ultimately secure $8 million of funding.
Ashley Robinson-Firmstone, SVP of Customer Success, Rokt
Of the many metrics a head of customer success is responsible for, there is one that immediately indicates their impact: revenue growth. In her nearly 8 years at Rokt, Ashley has proven time and time again that she can unlock sustained growth. Since joining as an account manager in 2014, she has helped the e-commerce technology provider grow revenue 100X.
She has held multiple roles and promotions in her time at Rokt, and now serves as the SVP of Customer Success. She leads a team that has grown to over 40 people as well as the budgets for team operations and productivity. Since taking this role on 2 years ago, she has grown revenue 1003%—to over $200M.
Elsa Chan, Munich Re, Cofounder of Delino
A serial entrepreneur, Elsa is currently driving new innovation for a centuries old insurance institution, Munich Re. She is the co-founder of Delino, a legaltech startup incubated out of Munich Re that provides small businesses with AI-powered contract risk management. Elsa has led the development of Delino from viability analysis to its current beta testing phase.
Elsa’s entrepreneurial background and experience in fintech has seen repeat success throughout her career. To date, she has been responsible for up to $10 million in annual revenue generation and helped raise over $35 million in venture funding.
CHAMPIONS
Tutti Taygerly, Executive Leadership Coach, Author, Speaker, Taygerly Labs | WINNER
Shaping the next generation of leadership in organizations and executive teams takes experience and passion. In Tutti’s case, that includes a 22-year career as a design leader spanning companies like Facebook and Disney. As an executive coach and the author of the book, Make Space to Lead, Tutti actively supports women, people of color, and immigrants towards making a bigger impact in the world. She coaches founders and CEOs on how to build teams and organizations, helps people find—and negotiate for—their worth, and provides leaders with tools to raise their profiles and influence.
Her coaching approach includes supporting diverse leaders in elevating their own style of leadership and breaking patterns that have dominated the technology industry for decades. Her advice has been featured in Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Fast Company.
Beth VanDeWalker, COO and Co-Founder, Design Research Collective Inc.
As a co-founder and COO of the Minneapolis-based innovation agency, Design Research Collective, Beth is responsible for design, creative strategy, and people. Under her leadership, the agency has grown from a 2-person shop to a collective of over 15 specialists across the US. Beth has intentionally prioritized hiring women and BIPOC talent and seeking individuals from diverse backgrounds to coach them into roles and new career opportunities.
Because Beth also oversees the operating budget, she ensures that her team is able to find balance with lives outside of work and families through generous paid time off policies, bonuses, and coaching.
Alison Harrington, Global Head of Cybersecurity Training & Awareness, HSBC
In a field where women are deeply underrepresented, Alison manages a global cybersecurity team of which 60% of the permanent staff are women. As the Global Head of Cybersecurity Training & Awareness at HSBC, she is responsible for leading a team and the design and implementation of cybersecurity training for over 250,000 HSBC colleagues across 60+ jurisdictions. A major part of her approach is using data to understand where there are learning and diversity gaps to reach underrepresented colleagues.
Alison brings not just deep industry knowledge to her work, she brings her experiences living in over 10 countries to shape an inclusive approach to ensuring effective training and engagement with cybersecurity practices and concepts. She uses her seat at the table to enact change: such as the development of an award-winning Cyber Fraud App for millions of clients in 7 different countries and championing education on gender pay gaps, reporting bullying, and reporting sexual harassment.
Meet these inspiring innovators at the WIN Gala!
INNOVATIONS
GENERAL INNOVATIONS
Sequin Financial, nominated by Vrinda Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Sequin Financial | WINNER
Team members to credit: Vrinda Gupta
Sequin is a women-founded company building a suite of financial products designed for women, starting with a debit card that builds credit. The seed-stage startup has raised nearly $6 million to solve a systemic problem: helping women build healthy credit scores in order to gain more financial mobility and freedom.
Not building credit can lead to credit card rejections, lower credit limits, and higher interest rates. Sequin is tackling this with its first product, a rewards card that makes it easy to build credit—and get rewarded for utilizing your credit. This not only helps customers maximize activities that benefit credit scores, it makes it simple and rewarding to do so.
PSM Generator, nominated by Martha Gary, Global Project Manager/Coordinator at EY
Team members to credit: Martha Gary, Tejaswini V., Payal Bharat Tated, Basavraj Grubasappa Maduvannavar, Arkadev Putatunda
Launched by a women-led team within EY, PSM Generator is a tool for global internal teams that takes a tedious process and streamlines it and automates key checkpoints. Prime-sub memos (PSMs) are an internal process that is followed by EY’s client-serving teams if they engage with foreign affiliates. It can also be a manual process, requiring the creation of a request for approval and appropriate follow up on it.
PSM Generator makes this process more efficient and consistent, saving teams time—while improving the overall quality and documentation of PSMs. The digital tool generates, tracks, and monitors PSMs by automating several steps, from generation and notification to approval requests, response tracking, reminders, and even reporting.
Innovation Gym, nominated by Suzanne Allers
Team members to credit: Suzanne Allers, Sally Kemkers, Deirdre Walters
Did you know that innovation is like a muscle? Training helps maintain innovation fitness and skills, but it’s often time consuming and unengaging, especially for remote teams. Innovation Gym has stepped in to solve that problem. Built for remote and global teams, Innovation Gym provides interactive, small-group trainings that combine short videos and live sessions to help teams practice skills in an accessible and engaging format.
Founded by the partners behind Untapped Innovation, the B2B program is a digital-first tool that delivers on Untapped’s proprietary training programs. In 6-months since launch, over 600 participants have “trained” with Innovation Gym—with 100% of customers returning for additional training modules or adding colleagues for training.
INNOVATIONS FOR EQUITY
FemTherapeutics Inc., nominated by Inara Lalani, Co-founder and COO at FemTherapeutics | WINNER
Team members to credit: Inara Lalani, Negin Ashouri
One in every four women will suffer from Pelvic Floor Disorders in their lifetime—and for women over 80, that number doubles. Yet, treatments result in about a 50% failure rate and haven’t been modified in 70+ years. FemTherapeutics is harnessing the power of 3D printing and AI to provide customized medical solutions for women. Specifically, they currently treat Pevlic Organ Prolapse (POP) through the world’s first customizable gynaecological prosthetic, a vaginal pessary. This non-surgical prosthetic is not only customized to each woman, it can be inserted and removed intravaginally by the user herself.
FemTherapeutics is planning for its first clinical trials with 40 patients in Canada in Q4 2022, and are oversubscribed with interest. It has showed significant promise in simulation and lab testing in a uterus model.
Bolder Money, nominated by Amy Schultz, Co-founder of Bolder Money
Team members to credit: Amy Schultz, Siddharth Singh
When it comes to achieving financial freedom, everyone is starting from a different place—whether that’s outdated advice, different milestones, or unique risk tolerance. For women especially, navigating these roadblocks can make the difference between staying in a toxic job, being stuck in a bad relationship, or investing in themselves. Bolder Money is a financial coaching platform that helps achieve money goals.
By focusing on the barriers that keep women from growing their financial power and freedom, Bolder Money is unlocking new opportunities for women to participate in the upside of financial services, reach goals, and form a relationship with money as a means to achieving more in life.
E-COMMERCE INNOVATIONS
Revelle, nominated by Joanna Hartzmark, Founder and CEO at Revelle | WINNER
Team members to credit: Joanna Hartzmark
As women increasingly shop online, the inconsistencies in the size chart make it even more frustrating to find clothing that fits—and ultimately makes you feel good. Revelle is an e-commerce platform on a mission to change that. It is free for shoppers, and after a brief quiz, women can get tailored recommendations based on an algorithm that prioritizes shape over size.
With tens of thousands of members, Revelle has been able to grow organically without external funding—and features an all-women team. The platform is seeing ever-increasing conversion rates reaching 3%, validation that women are hungry for a better way to shop and find clothes that fit each unique body without the guessing (and return) game.
Vistaprint: Design for Small Businesses, nominated by Jamie Masters, Senior Marketing Manager at Work & Co
Team members to credit: Rachel Bogan, Ricky Engelberg
Over 20 years ago, Vistaprint pioneered the web-to-print category for people seeking customized print products. But over the years, small businesses need more support than ever as a brand and digital presence have become table stakes. Vistaprint, in collaboration with the agency Work & Co, sought to re-establish its market offerings for small businesses through a new approach: design and digital services.
Vistaprint now offers its customers an entirely online way to get specialty design services and connect with professionals. This includes new marketing products and tools that go beyond print into managing a company’s digital presence, such as website builders and purchasing domain names. Not only does the new Vistaprint meet the needs of SMBs, it expands Vistaprint’s capabilities into services and digital offerings.
Hey Alexa Show Me How To Make A Non-Alcoholic Cocktail, nominated by Ashleigh Murray, Global SVP eCommerce & Digital at Lyres Spirit Co
Team members to credit: Ashleigh Murray, Andrew Lim
Non-alcoholic spirits are a new and innovative movement as people seek healthier alternatives to socializing and enjoying cocktails. As with anything new, people need help knowing what it is and how to use it. Lyre’s is on a mission to change the way the world drinks, and believes that technology is a large part of that equation. To help people explore the world of non-alcoholic cocktails, Lyre’s launched an Alexa skill that makes it as simple as asking: show me how to make a non-alcoholic cocktail.
Not only will the Lyre’s Alexa skill recommend and walk users through a step-by-step drink recipe, it is the first spirits company to allow customers to add products to their Amazon cart via voice. It’s one less barrier to sparking a new trend in spirits.
Meet the teams behind these innovations at the WIN Gala!