6 Inspiring Digital Women-Led Communities and Their Leads

The Digital Women Awards takes place every year to celebrate the work women are doing through digital. Digital Women’s Woman-Led Community of the Year award recognises and celebrates Women-Led communities that are providing a safe and meaningful place for their members to interact and bring like-minded people together with common goals, values or interests. This award particularly highlights communities supporting women highlighting in particular the incredible leaders who are steering those communities.

Here are our incredible women and their amazing communities they lead, here’s your Digital Women-Led Communities and Their Leads Award 2022 Finalists:

Name: Lynne Parker

Community: Funny Women

Lynne founded Funny Women in 2002 which was a reaction to a male comedy promoter who said there weren’t any female acts and furthermore ‘women aren’t funny’. Since then Funny Women has been her life’s work and she is very proud of what Funny Women has become. Her biggest passion is to encourage women to build self-confidence and develop their own distinctive voice. Whether that’s through Funny Women Awards which launched in 2003, or at a regular comedy workshop run by Funny Women. All of this supports women to find their voice, whether that be through performing and writing or using humour in business and everyday life. This year she will be celebrating 20 years in business as Funny Women Founder.

Name: Alexis Bushnell

Community: Social Media for Humans

Alexis is a social media guide and founder of Social Media for Humans, a movement changing the way social media works from the inside. She works primarily with neurodivergent business owners and people the generic advice just doesn’t work for. She busts myths and provide an honest, jargon-free explanation of algorithms and strategy to help business owners and individuals use social media effectively, ethically and in a way that’s sustainable for both the human running the business and the planet. Outside of trying to ruin Zuck’s master plan, she enjoys walking, dog agility, playing chess and yoga.

Name: Ellen Ryall

Community: ReFunk Upcycling

Ellen is one quarter of ReFunk Upcycling. Originally from Cork and moved to Dublin in 2015 to go to college in Trinity. After college she travelled to the US to work in sales and marketing for a year before returning to do a Masters in Marketing where she met her fellow co-founders. She is passionate about sustainability and the circular economy, and making eco-friendly options accessible to everyone. She is also really passionate about women in entrepreneurship and creating job opportunities for creatives and women across Ireland. She loves solving problems and chatting with people to understand deeply what they need and how she can help.

Name: Meg Kissack

Community: The Rebel Rousers

Meg is a podcaster, coach and all round rebel-rouser. She helps creative, multi-passionate and unconventional women get out of their own way, do the things only they can do and make the world a brighter place. She lives in Liverpool with her ‘fabulously silly dog’ Merlin and her personal motto is ‘everything changes when you believe you matter’.

Name: Mi Elfverson

Community: The Vlog Academy

Mi Elfverson, Founder of The Vlog Academy, Creator of EyeStorm and UK Chair of G100 Media, Arts and Communication and the Associate Editor of G-Reviews. She’s a video producer and visibility coach based in Brighton. Mi works predominantly with women in business to encourage them to step forward, share their passion and expertise to establish themselves as experts in their field. She has a background in a very high-end film and TV production, where she used to work with international clients such as Kellogg’s, VOLVO, Ericsson as well as big Blockbuster films like the Bond films. Over the last few years, her focus has shifted from the corporate industries, to work much more with women, community support and gender equality. She does this through the Eye Storm community and though workshops, her online platforms and groups and also as a leader of the G100 MAC. She runs an online accountability programme for women, called Rise&Shine, where a mixture of videos, applications and live-streamed events give the women new insights and learning. This supports them to get more confident both in front and behind the camera, to understand how to share more relevant and engaging content, to step forward in their own power to grow their audience and to thrive. Through the global network G100MAC, we are on a mission to create a thriving support network, global opportunities and collaborative ecosystem for women in different segments of media across the world – united in sisterhood, support and solidarity.

Name: Naomi Mellor

Community: The Skylark Collective

The Skylark Collective was founded in 2021 by Naomi Mellor, a passionate advocate of raising the voices of women and non-binary folk in podcasting. Having been a part of various womens’ networks in the fields of sport, science, entrepreneurship and digital during the course of her career, Naomi realised there was no existing European network for women in podcasting to provide support or sisterhood, so decided to start one. The Skylark Collective is a global community that provides a haven for women and non-binary podcasters to learn, grow and network. We provide exclusive masterclasses hosted by top industry professionals, monthly members’ meet-ups, access to a private WhatsApp group with Naomi for support and advice, and an ever-growing library of resources and videos. As part of our mission to support and champion women podcasters, The Skylark Collective also hosts the International Women’s Podcast Awards. This unique event was held for the first time in September 2021, with a sell-out live event at the AllBright, London, and an accompanying global livestream. The 2022 awards will be held in partnership with The Conduit, London and promises to be a brilliant event.

These are our 2022 Women’s Champion Finalists. We feel inspired do you? Let us know by sharing this and tagging us on social media – #DigitalWomenAwards @Digita1Women

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