WiTH

Meet the Nominees of the WiTH Leadership Award

At this year’s SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit, taking place Nov. 4 in Los Angeles, and co-located with the Infinity Festival Hollywood event, Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH) will present the winners of the 5th Annual Leadership Awards.

Honoring leaders and advocating for women in the entertainment technology field, the Leadership Awards recognize those who exemplify WiTH’s pillars in both their work and communities, with a focus on those who excel in professional development, mentoring and networking, and community engagement. Past winners of the award included Christina Aguilera, head of technology workflow and strategy for Amazon Studios; Nancy Faginas-Cody, former SVP of enterprise business systems for The Walt Disney Co.; Cristina Mancini-Jones, chief marketing and engagement officer for Salesforce; and Theresa Miller, EVP and CIO for Lionsgate.

Among the nominees are:

Albertina Cardiel Chavez

Albertina Cardiel Chavez, is a cybersecurity evangelist, the IT governance, risk and compliance director, and diversity and inclusion leader for Softtek. She has more than 20 years of experience in IT leadership, project management and information security. She is the founder and leader of the nonprofit organization StarOnTheFly, which focuses on designing parental cybersecurity educational programs and awareness conferences for mentors, schools, and teachers.

Hollie Choi

Hollie Choi is the executive director of the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR) and a longtime technology leader in the industry. Working in IT at Fox, then Disney, Choi championed automation and has a deft understanding of the stack and workflow required to achieve innovation or efficiency. She also works closely with other female technologists and maintains a LinkedIn network of female technology speakers. A champion for DEI, Choi works on accessibility issues and implementation across numerous technologies.

Anna Claiborne

The CTO of PacketFabric, Anna Claiborne is the founder and creator of the most revolutionary networking service that the entertainment industry has seen to date. Her disruptive spirit is rivaled only by her breadth of technical acumen, making her a change maker in enterprise and telco years before applying PacketFabric’s services to a changing Hollywood. Now, by turning her attention to M&E, her company has converted legacy soundstages to “connected Stages,” paving the way for virtual production to advance, raw footage to be transferred seamlessly, and creative teams to collaborate and reach the cloud.

Marcela Escobar-Alava

Marcela Escobar-Alava is special assistant to President Biden, serving as his deputy director of technology at the White House. A former divisional CIO of worldwide home entertainment information technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Escobar-Alava went on to be the head of technology at the Hispanic Scholarship Fund where she built their technology roadmap from the ground up. She poured her time, energy, and technical acumen into that organization which, like Women in Technology Hollywood, is focused on giving back and creating opportunities for their community.

Eric Iverson

Eric Iverson is the director of product strategy for Amazon Studios and has been a highly committed and vocal advocate and ally for women in tech in the entertainment industry for many years. He participated in the planning and instruction at the UCLA Extension Women in Leadership CIO Certification program. He has partnered with WiTH on various initiatives and programs. And he has been a mentor in the WiTH Mentorship program and has been a formal and informal mentor and sponsor to many women at the various studios.

Lian Li

Lian Li works as developer advocate for Lost Labs and is a regular speaker on DEI at various tech events, educating community leaders and members on how they can act more inclusively. She co-organizes ServerlessDays Amsterdam, a community conference and meetup series about the serverless ecosystem. She has spearheaded diversity and inclusion efforts at the companies she’s worked for and has given talks on machine learning at conferences in Hamburg, Singapore, Paris, Barcelona, and Vancouver.

For more information about the WiTH Leadership Awards, please contact [email protected].

To register for the event, click here.

To sponsor SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit 2022, contact [email protected].

This is the second of several articles profiling the nominees of the Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH) 5th Annual Leadership Awards. You can read the first article here.