VentureBeat has announced the finalists for the Women in AI Awards 2025

The organizers of VB Transform have announced the finalists for the annual Women in AI Awards 2025. The awards ceremony will take place June 25 on the main stage at VB Transform in San Francisco. VentureBeat experts judged the nominees for their contributions to ethics, research, and entrepreneurship in AI.

The nominees were honored for their contributions to AI ethics, research, and entrepreneurship.

AI Entrepreneurship: from lab to business

The AI Entrepreneurship category recognizes women who have created companies with real commercial impact. The assessment takes into account business traction and the impact of technology on the artificial intelligence market.

• Elnaz Sarraf, CEO and founder of ROYBI
• Natalya Lopareva, CEO and founder of Algorized
• Ouafae Karim, engineer and founder of AFEOS (AFRICA-EO-SERVICES)
• Francessca Vasquez, Vice President of Professional Services and Center for Generative Innovation at AWS
• Val Vacante, senior vice president of innovation solutions at Dentsu

AI Mentorship: shaping the next generation

The AI Mentorship nomination recognizes leadership in mentoring women in AI. Winning women have helped develop skills, expanded professional networks, and inspired entry into the industry.

• Sandra Brown, deputy general counsel, SoftBank Robotics America, Inc.
• Suruchi Shah, head of the Model Maintenance team at LinkedIn
• Parul Bhandari, Global Head of Partner Strategy for Telecom, Media and Gaming at Microsoft
• Reut Lazo, founder of Women X AI
• Nicole Carignan, senior vice president of security and AI strategy, field CISO at Darktrace

AI Research: fuel for transformative AI

The AI Research category honors women whose research work is accelerating the progress of artificial intelligence. Contributions in both academia and corporate labs were judged.

• Lindsay Richman, CEO Innerverse AI
• Payel Das, lead researcher and manager at IBM Research – T.J. Watson Research Center
• Suma Kumaraswamy, senior director of digital products at First Tech Federal Credit Union
• Ann Irvine, chief data and analytics officer at Resilience
• Hannaneh Hajishirzi, senior director of NLP at AI2 and professor at the University of Washington

Responsibility and Ethics: Responsible AI

This nomination recognizes women paving the way for more equitable and ethical AI. Considered for their leadership in developing responsible practices.

• Alicia Shapiro, CMO and head of news at AiNews.com
• Denise Turley, vice president of technology, data and AI at the U.S. Department of Commerce
• Sakshi Kiran Naik, AI/ML engineer at Walgreens Boots Alliance
• Stephanie Cohen, director of strategy at Cloudflare
• Edwina Fitzmaurice, head of global marketing initiatives at EY

Rising Star: a new wave of leaders in AI

The Rising Star nomination recognizes women at the start of their careers who are already demonstrating outstanding leadership and innovation.

• Arina Vlasova, CEO, DataGPT
• Minista Jazz, CEO Much Different
• Natalia Rodriguez, Vice President of Recruitment at BairesDev
• Rita Kozlov, vice president of developer and AI products at Cloudflare
• Cecilia Shen, CEO and co-founder of Cybever, Inc.

Congratulations to all the nominees for making it to the finals of the Women in AI Awards 2025. Thank you for your participation and contribution to the industry.

The VentureBeat announced the finalists of the Women in AI Awards 2025 was first published on ITZine.ru.