Shortlist: Digital Woman For Good Award – Digital Women Awards

The Digital Women For Good Award recognises and celebrates women who are working to help others or to highlight important issues and causes. At the core of what they do wether in business or otherwise, these women are working hard to help and support other people as well as great causes through the use of digital and social media.

Here are your finalists:

Rachel Davis – LaLa Tigers

I’m on a mission to to change the world one song at a time! There is so much attention on personal growth & transformation, however it is before age 7 that a person belief systems are forming. These beliefs go onto shape the way the child sees and feels about themselves, others, the world and ultimately what they are capable of. Instead of undoing this later in life, it is important that we go straight to the source, as the child’s mind is forming. If we can teach our children about their internal world of thoughts and feelings, we can help them gain control of them and in turn focus them on the life they want to create.

Rachel Davis lives in Brighton with her 2 children, who have inspired what she now considers to be her life’s work, increasing worthiness & self esteem in children. After running music sessions for 6 years, Rachel now uses music to encourage parents & children to find their own personal power and use their gifts and talents to serve the world. Oh…and she LOVES music & dancing!

Lea Rice – Heart and Soul Digital

I have dedicated my whole career to using digital to further charitable causes. After graduating as a journalist I started out in agency work supporting our Water Aid account, moving into youth volunteering (where I began my expertise in marketing to young audiences), starting my own digital marketing business to help social media and content types climb the career ladder without burning out, selling my unique content planners with a donation from each going to mental health charity; The Blurt Foundation, and then balancing this business with a new job in the charity sector – this time looking after the military’s physical and mental wellbeing throughout and after service (not forgetting their families, too).

Lea Rice is the Digital Marketing Specialist transforming lives through the magic of social media, supporting the UK’s Digital Marketing Community to climb the career ladder without burning out.

Alex Cachia – CodeHarbour

 

Working with the woman who taught me programming ten years ago has given me even more of a drive to pass on this knowledge to the next generation of women and witnessing her build her organisation from scratch showed me this was possible. I believe the work I do as part of Future Coders is essential to increasing the technology sector within Kent and that combining this with CodeHarbour I can help to address the imbalance currently seen within the IT sector in relation to gender.

My name is Alex Cachia [Ka-Key-Ah] and I am a full stack web and database developer from Canterbury. I started my business last year as I have a passion for technology and want to inspire other women to pursue careers in development. It was this passion that has led me to taking over as host and coordinator of codeHarbour, a free technology meetup based in Kent, of which I am the first woman to do so in its five-year history. The aim of codeHarbour is to bring like minded individuals together once a month for a night of tech talks, pizza and socialising. I am currently in my first year as host and have watched the event grow in popularity and maintained a consistent level of quality in terms of speakers, venues and most importantly: pizza!

Jennifer Gilmour – #AbuseTalk

I want to take the opportunity to raise awareness amongst digital women, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their life time and it is important that awareness is raised with the red flags. I always try to find unique and creative ways to bring awareness to domestic abuse and have achieved this using my own skills and social media to spread the message. The digital mum award in specific is something I would be so proud of because my two older children endured the abuse I experienced as well, they were victims. I am doing everything in my power to help them move forward with their life. I have tried my best to protect them and help mums all over the world in relation to the children’s services. I empathise and am one of the 1% in the UK with a no-contact order.

Jennifer Gilmour is an author and advocate for women in abusive relationships, using her own experiences of domestic abuse as a catalyst to bring awareness and to help others.

Jennifer has published two publications, Isolation Junction and Clipped Wings which have both been Amazon Best Sellers and received awards. Jennifer speaks at events across the UK and continues to raise awareness through her blog posts, public speaking, radio interviews and social media. Jennifer has listened to her readers and has grown a digital community to support discussions around domestic abuse online.

Starting with her Twitter Chat which opened late 2017 #AbuseTalk, this developed into an online forum in 2018. This year Jennifer launched a series of interviews with those in the sector and gives followers the opportunity to ask burning questions on her podcast.  Most Informative Blogger Award 2018 (Bloggers Bash Annual Awards) UK & European Award for using Social Media for Good 2019 (Social Day: Social Media Marketing Awards)  Jennifer says: “Together we are Louder”.

Tereza Litsa – Lightful

Everything I do revolves around the idea of using social media for good. From my personal use of social media to write and curate inspiring content to being part of great campaigns, it’s all about staying positive in an authentic way. I’ve set up the strategy and the implementation of a very successful campaign for Lightful 2 years ago called #ReclaimSocial. Lightful is a tech for good company and they wanted to come up with an awareness campaign that highlights their values and their passion for tech for good.

#ReclaimSocial started as an idea of encouraging people to share more positive stories on social media. I was responsible for the strategy, the outreach, the community management and the monitoring. It was very exciting to be able to use my passion for social media for good as part of my job in a campaign that quickly resonated with millions of people.

Tereza Litsa is a social media manager and trainer at Lightful, helping charities improve their social media skills. She’s been working as a social media and content marketing manager for the last 7 years and she is passionate about social media and how it can be used in the tech for good sector in a more impactful way. Her posts have been featured in sites such as Nptechforgood, NTEN, ClickZ, CharityComms, Social Media Week and she has delivered training and webinars for many organisations on all things digital. She has received the Highly Commended award as ‘Community Manager of the Year’ and also the Highly Commended award for ‘Campaign for Social Good’ for Lightful’s #ReclaimSocial campaign at Social Media Marketing Awards 2019. She is also the host of the #ReclaimSocial podcast and you can find her tweeting @terezalitsa

Sian Conway – Ethical Hour

Ethical Hour is the world’s first and largest network for people who want to live and work more ethically, with a global reach of over 57,000 people. All our work is aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals, and we recently achieved the highest possible rating (4 stars) from Support The Goals – which puts us at the top 4% of businesses for our commitment, plans, actions and progress towards the SDGs – this includes businesses from the FTSE100 and FTSE250!

Sian Conway is the Founder of #EthicalHour – the world’s first and largest online network for people who want to live and work more ethically and sustainably. She has worked around the world on social impact projects and now supports ethical and sustainable entrepreneurs and organisations as an ethical marketing strategist and business mentor.

A bestselling author and speaker, Sian was Green & Eco Influencer of the Year 2018 and in 2019 she was personally invited to be a DEFRA Year of Green Action Ambassadors in recognition of her work to inspire individuals, communities and businesses to live more ethically and sustainably.

Hetty Rackham – Female Business Start-ups

Female Business Start-up philosophy… “If an egg is forced to break from the outside, life ends…. If an egg is broken naturally from within – life begins!” I feel passionately our business ideas should be led by your passion, your true self, your core skills and YOU. Not from any other external factors or pressure from other people.

Hetty Rackham, proud mum of 2 beautiful children, Founder of Female Business Start-ups. 24 years of experience in the marketing and digital marketing industry, she has a varied background of agency, client-side and then freelance consultancy. Experience includes managing a £1.3m marketing budget, project managed TV & radio campaigns, large events for up to 10k people, direct mail, PR, brand management, social media management for the likes of Southampton Boat Show and Leeds Castle Classical Concert to sell event tickets in the 10’s to 100’s of thousands.. Using this experience she has created bespoke Female Business Start-up marketing and digital marketing courses, empowering and equipping women to start-up and continue to run their business with long term strategies. Always keeps her digital women membership close to her heart, as we are here to celebrate each other’s successes and support and lift each other when things get a little tough or tricky.

Holly Billinghurst – TeachAllAboutIT

After spending three years attempting to make classroom teaching in a wheelchair work, I realised that there was a genuine issue with access to education for students and teachers with disabilities. This prompted me to make use of my software development background to create a platform which levelled the playing ground for students and teachers through online tuition.

Holly is the founder of TeachAllAboutIt and a Computer Science Master Teacher who works with both students and teachers across the UK and internationally. Having moved to full time tutoring in 2019 after a decade of classroom teaching Computer Science & ICT in both independent and state schools, she founded TeachAllAboutIt as a way to continue to support both students and teachers of Computing in a non-traditional setting with a focus on accessibility for everyone. In 2018, she released her first book ‘Teach All About It: 100 Down-To-Earth Tips To Make The Most Out of Your Classroom’, aimed at helping secondary school teachers implement activities that promote progress and reduce stress for both students and teachers. In 2019, her visual revision guides for GCSE & iGCSE Computer Science were published and are now used in schools across the UK.

Fiona Catchpole -Henpicked: Menopause in the Workplace

Most recently menopause has become my super-power – quite literally. Driven by the sudden shock of finding myself completely unprepared for peri-menopause and the desire to help other women be prepared, I teamed up with Henpicked and Menopause in the Workplace and now manage their digital marketing. The combination of #CyberGran and menopause holds no bounds.

Fiona Catchpowle is a self-taught social media trainer with nearly 15 years experience in online marketing. She loves teaching business owners how to identify the best way to connect with their audience online, saving time and frustrations that often occur with digital story telling. Her new super power is the menopause and she actively seeks ways in which to support women transition through hormonal decline and out the other side, in style.

Stacey Calder – Business Success Network

Stacey uses her digital knowledge for good often helping parents and children alike to make sure they know the powers (and the downfalls) of the digital world and uses her personal social media channels to ‘keep it real’ feeling like she has a duty of care to people to show them it’s not all about filters and photoshop!

Stacey Calder is a Speaker and trainer, social media manager and online community builder. Owner and editor of the Business Success Magazine. Campaigner. Super mum/guardian to a not quite normal family.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THESE INCREDIBLE WOMEN DOING SO MUCH GOOD WITH THIER DIGITAL SKILLS!

JOIN US ON THE 9TH MARCH IN LONDON AS WE CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY AND THE WORK WOMEN ARE DOING IN DIGITAL AND BUSINESS.