Booking.com Announces Finalists for its Inaugural Technology Playmaker Awards
AMSTERDAM, NL – 5 February 2018 - Today Booking.com, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies and a digital technology leader, announced the finalists for the inaugural Booking.com Technology Playmaker Awards. The awards aim to celebrate and recognise women on the European tech scene who have disrupted and are transforming businesses, industries, and communities through the use of technology.
Finalists come from more than 10 European countries, including Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the UK.
The awards include nine categories which are intended to recognise women’s technology contributions in multiple areas including entrepreneurship, innovation, community impact, sustainability and leadership among others. The nine winners will be announced along with a tenth award for the overall Technology Playmaker of the Year 2018, at a special gala dinner in London on March 8th to coincide with International Women’s Day. Randi Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, will deliver the keynote speech during the event.
Winners will be selected by a panel of senior executives spanning a range of global tech companies and successful start-ups including Booking.com, Skyscanner, Just Eat, Happn, WeTransfer and SwiftKey as well as representatives from the academic world, the European Parliament and a leading global business media title. Each category winner will receive a monetary prize of €5,000. The overall Technology Playmaker of the Year will also receive a €10,000 grand prix prize.
Booking.com CEO Gillian Tans said, “The Technology Playmaker Awards celebrate diversity and gender equality and aim to empower and encourage more women to enter and succeed in the technology industry, regardless of their background. We recently conducted research to better understand gender bias in the tech sector and nearly 90% of the female respondents told us that seeing more women in leadership roles would inspire them to advance their career in tech. We hope, therefore, that our winners and shortlisters will become role models to other women and girls in the future.”
“We’ve had applicants from diverse backgrounds across different stages of their careers. From young entrepreneurs who have set up digital programmes to assist refugee integration, to technology innovators who are disrupting healthcare and e-learning, to an 11 year-old girl who is teaching her peers to code. We are excited about celebrating their success and encouraging our finalists as they continue to innovate and lead in the technology space.”
For more information about the shortlisted finalists, please visit: http://techplaymakerawards.com/finalists