17 Amazing Digital Entrepreneurs!

The Digital Women Awards takes place every year to celebrate the work women are doing through digital.

The Digital Women Entrepreneur of The Year Award recognises and celebrates women who are operating a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal risks in order to do so in the Digital Space. Entrepreneurs play a key role in employment and the economy, using the skills and initiative necessary to anticipate needs and bring new ideas to market.

Here are our brilliant women, your Digital Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 Finalists:

Name: Rebecca Bailey

Bailey Marketing was born in 2018 as a social media marketing agency, from the unique skill set, aspirations and bullishness of a young 21-year-old female entrepreneur. Since then, despite the pandemic and the economic challenges and as Rebecca states “opportunities”, Bailey Marketing has established itself not only as a busy social media marketing platform, but a business management agency, website development and management agency.

Rebecca has been the admin, sales, accounts, and marketing guru all in one! Being a one-woman band, Rebecca has managed to not only grow Bailey Marketing from a business start-up but has continued to develop its delivery, supporting over 35 clients ranging from small independents to multi-million-pound accounts. Her secret? A self-declared workaholic who is driven by her passion for the industry and seeking out the best for her clients.

Never one to stand still, Rebecca has also launched another project called WE ARE VISIT. Developed during the global pandemic, to keep small independents doors open, and its success has generated We Are Visit into a UK wide tourist information centre, and has created job opportunities for women who want to work in marketing, design, and photography.

Name: Kay Kukoyi

Kay is the CEO and founder of Purposeful Group and its brands; Tech Startup Academy™, Freelancer Academy™ and Digital Careers Academy™. Purposeful Group is an entrepreneurship, technology and digital skills consultancy that works with SMEs, entrepreneurs, career builders and digital upskillers and the founders of early-stage tech startups around the world.

Pursuing challenges, continuing to evolve, and sharing knowledge with others have been consistent themes throughout Kay’s life. She is a qualified behavioural and performance coach, a qualified marketer, and a Certified SCRUM Master and she believes the more that she knows, the more useful she is, both to herself and to others.

Kay has been recognised on the #IB100 – the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards list of the 100 Most Influential BAME Leaders in the UK Technology Sector (2019) and is currently a finalist for the Black Tech Awards Lifetime Achievement Award for individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the technology profession (2022), and for Best Small Business Owner and Best Small Service Based Business, at the Small Awards 2022.

Name: Federica Argentieri

When Federica founded Timotico Ltd she did it with the intention of helping entrepreneurs entering the digital market, people who understand almost nothing about digital. It is not simple, but it is a mission, to help small businesses grow and bear the weight of increasingly fierce competition, to help the market move forward in the digitalisation process. Federica matches creativity and numbers, and her communication is “human to human” whilst achieving practical results.

Furthermore, business sustainability is important to Federica, and she ensures that customers are taken care of. The company cares about its customer’s uniqueness and the construction of the brand sewn on the values of the entrepreneurs.

Name: Avni Gohil

Avni is the founder of Virtuelicious (ten-minute zero-waste recipe blends). She used to work in the Insurance sector as an actuary which she enjoyed very much. She would assess how much insurance companies were required to hold to pay future claims but in 2015 she realised her true calling was to figure out how to reduce food and packaging waste.

But she knew it had to tick all the boxes if it had any chance of taking off. So she came up with the idea of recipe blends that take only ten minutes in the kitchen, are portion sized so there is no food waste and are super easy to make.

Name: Christine MacKay

Christine founded her company in 2014. At the time, animation as a medium wasn’t so common within B2B communication, however it has grown enormously since then, and now animation has become a positive solution, not just for education and business, but also for entertainment when filming isn’t an option.

Christine and her team work across 18 different industries to produce unique and powerful multifaceted visual assets – from children’s book illustrations and corporate explainers, to training videos and immersive augmented and virtual presentations. She works with Multinationals, start-ups, Brand Marketing teams, Advertising and PR agencies alike, using 2D, 3D, AR, VR, Motion Graphics, Stop Motion, Branding, and Design.

Christine has animation studios in Eton and Dundee and further representation in San Francisco. Her studios have been recognised at prestigious awards such as The Moondance International Film Festival, The Orlando International Film Festival, The Great British Entrepreneur Awards and The Best Business Woman Awards to name a few.

Name: Cheryl Laidlaw

Cheryl is the CEO and Creative Director of the Web Design Company, Website in a Day and London Web Girl. Cheryl is a Designer, Digital Marketing Strategist, and Style Curator helping businesses launch what they love through branding & web design.

Her goal is to help businesses quickly launch their website, so they can start getting results. She is hugely passionate about making websites accessible and enjoyable to all business owners, even if they consider themselves ‘non techy’. With over 15 years of design and strategy experience she has created hundreds of brands and websites.

Name: Ayo Abbas

Ayo is a built environment marketing consultant with over 20+ years’ experience in B2B marketing. Ayo has worked for many of the world’s major firms including Arup and Mace, working on projects such as the Olympic Park transformation, the redevelopment of Birmingham New Street Station and King’s Cross Rail and Underground stations.

In February 2020, Ayo founded her own consultancy business – Abbas Marketing – and offers marketing services for built environment firms and organisations. Ayo enjoys working with companies who are passionate about what they do and aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo.

Ayo is a fellow of the RSA and a committee member for Build Up! – a built environment marketing networking group. She also set up her own podcast in July 2020 to showcase industry best practice, Marketing In Times of Recovery.

Name: Ashleigh Watson

Ashleigh is the host of “Social Media Savvy” – this calendar event brings the best of social media experts, brands and know-how to the stage in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

In 2021, in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, she themed the conference “Connecting & Communicating In Times of Crisis” and invited global PR practitioner Donald Steele to deliver the keynote address. The former Head of Comms for the BBC and now international speaker and crisis comms expert shared his experience and advise to an audience of marketing communications and PR professionals. The event was attended by over 60 in person (numbers were restricted) and considerably more online with a global audience across the UK, Ireland, France and Australia!

Name: Kerry Ferguson

Kerry runs a bilingual website design and digital marketing company called Gwe Cambrian Web. They are based in Aberystwyth, mid Wales. Kerry says she absolutely love running my own business, and is incredibly passionate about sharing the potential of the digital world to other small businesses, and also promoting the use of the Welsh language to those businesses in Wales as well. Kerry strives to make sure that she is visible, helpful and friendly.

Kerry has a fair few hats, all of which she feels work well together. She is a Mentor for Business Wales, and currently has 7 mentees on her list. She is also a Role Model for Big Ideas Wales, and a Tutor at Aberystwyth University. In her free time, she is a board member for Menter Aberystwyth and Radio Aber, a Town Councillor and President of the new Ardal Aberystwyth Rotary Club.

Name: Charelle Griffith

Charelle is a Chartered Marketer, award-winning business blogger, and business and marketing strategist for solo coaches, consultants and online service providers.

With a passion for supporting solopreneurs and small business owners, Charelle focusses on taking the overwhelm out of marketing and instead creates marketing strategies that allows her clients to shine online, consistently create content that converts and ultimately build a business they love (and that pays them properly).

Name: Megan Antoney

Megan has been running her own business for 4 years and has grown from being a Virtual Assistant to now being an Online Business Manager, running a small marketing agency. She also has another business, coaching others on how they can build their own business and build the freedom into their lives that we all desire.

Megan has been able build up a business over the last 4 years that is 100% digital and remote. She set up her business with her laptop and a will to make it work. Within four weeks she had five clients and within three months she was hiring someone to help in the business. From then it has grown and grown and she has constantly adapted to the digital needs of clients and the industry.

Name: Anna Parker-Naples

Anna is known as the leading British woman in podcasting. She’s among only 4 women to have written a book on the subject worldwide, and is currently responsible for consulting, producing or training over 350 podcasters in the business and personal development categories. Over 10% of all of the top business shows in the UK are influenced by Anna and her team. What makes Anna unique amongst her competitors is that she doesn’t just tell people how to have successful podcasts, she runs two of them herself. She is host to two top global podcasts – Entrepreneurs Get Visible has reached no.1 in Entrepreneurship in several countries and is consistently ranked in the top 1% of all podcasts globally. Her newest podcast ‘Podcasting for Entrepreneurs’ became an instant no.1 in Marketing, and for a three week period she was the only solo female podcaster in the Top 10 in the main UK Business category in Apple.

More importantly, her clients are able to create equal results with their shows, which go on to help them achieve their first million dollar launches, fill their Facebook Groups in droves, and open up huge opportunities that were previously closed to them, such as having traditional publishers reach out to offer book deals, or being able to be requested as a high profile speaker at a highly converted speaking event, as a direct result of the impact of their podcast.

Name: Alexandra Soame

Alexandra is an innovative tech entrepreneur focused on developing brands which have had a huge impact on the corporate world offering work and development for thousands of women in these industries.

She and her team started delivering virtual entertainment and health and well-being events to brands around the globe from spring 2020 to clients such as Cisco Facebook and Sony. They connect Global teams and support remote workers well-being. It is impactive and crucial work harnessing all the latest virtual tech.

Alexandra now consults for corporates and businesses on audio visual equipment, platforms and business critical virtual events. She and her team have recently worked with large tech companies on sales kicks offs and company wide training programmes including Orange and Hewlett Packard.

Name: Áine McGurk

Áine is from an IT background having worked in the Software Industry for over 16 years. She has always been creative and have had a love of fashion and design so the idea for DaintyBear.com was born when she couldn’t easily source good quality, stylish soft-soled footwear and accessories for her daughter when she was starting to walk.

She launched Dainty Bear in May 2018 after 6 months research, brand development and sample sourcing. She has reinvested her profits and created her own clothing range on the success of her footwear collection. Áine has grown her business organically online particularly through Instagram with over 15k followers. She has just won the Visa Ireland She’s Next Micro Business Award which she plans to use to grow and scale her business to the next level in 2022.

Name: Ruth Gilbey

Ruth is a business coach specialising in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with.

Her biggest passion is to help women understand their true potential and build a business that reflects who they are and the life they want to live and she has helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

Ruth had a lightbulb moment in 2017 that she did not need to give up on her own business dreams and that she could do this by helping others achieve their results! She embarked on a coaching Diploma in Transformational Coaching and received coaching herself and got the clarity and focus she needed to start building the business she wanted and help other women do the same.

Ruth has a growing membership that supports women to grow their businesses and support each other and it’s her mission to help women have more confidence and think more commercially about their skills and experience.

Name: Dr Libby Kemkaran

Iternational Coach and TEDx Speaker Libby Kemkaran has helped 1000’s of clients around the world massively increase their success in business. She has helped her clients grow their worth into multi-million pound companies and build their businesses from the ground up.

Libby works with women all around the World; New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Dubai and in Europe, helping these women to achieve their ambitions, their dreams and quit the 9-5. Libby helps women to achieve freedom and wealth by working through flow consultancy, to help her clients realise the best form of themselves. Libby helps them realise their potential and how to utilise it, their superpowers, their inner goddess and help them get the most out of both their work and their personal lives and works with individuals as well as corporate companies.

Libby says that having a scientific background gives her the grounding and understanding of the neurology involved in mindset coaching and neurocoaching.

Name: Diana Tadros

Diana is a Cosmetic Dentist who owns a boutique practice in South Florida. Outside of her practice, she is the CEO and sole owner and lecturer of a Digital Training center, Exocad Elite, for healthcare professionals.

In a field that has been predominately run by men, Diana has become a trailblazer and innovator in the digital space of Dentistry and Healthcare. Her expertise on digital designing utilizing CAD software and 3D printing for treatment planning and diagnosis has lead to increased quality of patient care coupled with decreased cost to patients.

Her advancements in this sector has caught the attention of numerous digital companies who have brought her on as their Key Opinion Leader and lecturer. This level of commitment to utilizing digital technology in practice to increase patient care has led to numerous dentists and healthcare professionals desiring to learn her workflow and methods .

Diana is now the founder, CEO and sole lecturer of Exocad Elite, a training center that provides hands on workshops for dentists and healthcare professionals to learn how to navigate digital designing and 3D printing.

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