Women to Watch in UAS Global Awards programme to be held live at CES 2022 as part of new partnership

Women and Drones has announced its 5th Anniver­sary Women To Watch (WTW) in UAS Glob­al Awards 2021 pro­gramme will occur live in Las Vegas at CES 2022.

It was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to take place dur­ing the Inter­Drone Con­fer­ence from August 10th to 12th in Dal­las, but the Inter­Drone team made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to can­cel the 2021 edi­tion of its con­fer­ence.

The pro­gram will now take place on Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 6th at the Las Vegas Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Media is encour­aged to attend and space will be lim­it­ed. This year, thanks to the program’s kind spon­sors and oth­er donors, Women and Drones will be pro­vid­ing hon­ouree women and teams with a micro-grant for the first time

Sharon Ross­mark, Women and Drones CEO, said: “When a door clos­es, a win­dow opens. We are absolute­ly ecsta­t­ic that CES, the world’s most influ­en­tial tech event, is host­ing our 5th Anniver­sary Women to Watch pro­gram! “The future is bright! We can’t wait to see every­one in Las Vegas!”

The WTW pro­gramme ele­vates the entire UAS/UAM/AAM indus­try by recog­nis­ing those who are mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in it. Nom­i­na­tions were gath­ered in the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories from March 8th (Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day) until May 14th. This year, thanks to the program’s kind spon­sors and oth­er donors, Women and Drones will be pro­vid­ing hon­oree women and teams with a micro-grant for the first time.

The cat­e­gories are:

• The Iris Automa­tion Entre­pre­neur­ship Award — a woman inno­va­tor who has sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact­ed the UAS indus­try and pos­sess­es out­stand­ing busi­ness acu­men and inno­v­a­tive prac­tices that led to the suc­cess of her com­pa­ny, projects or the efforts of oth­ers

• The Sky­dio Pub­lic Safety/Service Award — a woman who serves the pub­lic in any capac­i­ty and epit­o­mizes com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment or bet­ter­ment ser­vice-ori­ent­ed activ­i­ties indi­cat­ing com­mit­ment and sac­ri­fice, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to: human­i­tar­i­an efforts (drones for good), pub­lic pol­i­cy, military/federal/law enforce­ment or pub­lic safe­ty efforts etc

• The Sabrew­ing Air­craft Lead­er­ship Award — a woman who demon­strates an excep­tion­al abil­i­ty to moti­vate peo­ple or groups to achieve a com­mon goal, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to: edu­ca­tion, pol­i­cy, research & devel­op­ment, inno­va­tion, busi­ness and human­i­tar­i­an efforts

• The Unmanned Safe­ty Insti­tute Edu­ca­tion Award - a woman teacher or instruc­tor who active­ly engages stu­dents with drones, shares the val­ue of drones with­in cur­ricu­lum and devel­ops drone pro­grams oppor­tu­ni­ties and pro­grams and pro­vides pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment to oth­ers as an ambas­sador for drone and STEM edu­ca­tion

The pro­gramme also recog­nis­es out­stand­ing teams:

• The Vola­tus Aero­space Inno­va­tion Team Award — a team, group, com­pa­ny, agency or orga­ni­za­tion in the drone ecosys­tem that active­ly encour­ages and inspires women to dis­rupt and inno­vate with­in the UAS indus­try

• The Fox­Fury Team Spot­light Award — a glob­al co-ed team, group, com­pa­ny, agency or orga­ni­za­tion in the drone ecosys­tem whose over­all work con­tributes to the pos­i­tive pub­lic per­cep­tion of drones (“drones for good”) while fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of female empow­er­ment and inclu­sive­ness where women are engaged in key roles on the team and/or in lead­er­ship posi­tions

Karen Chup­ka, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent at CES and Con­sumer Tech Asso­ci­a­tion, added: “Every year at CES, tech lead­ers and promis­ing entre­pre­neurs con­vene to share ideas, launch prod­ucts and forge rela­tion­ships – all paving the way for our future.

“We are excit­ed to host the Women to Watch awards at CES 2022 and recog­nise the trail­blaz­ers, inno­va­tors, men­tors and busi­ness lead­ers mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the indus­try.”

For more infor­ma­tion about CES 2022, vis­it: https://www.ces.tech/. Addi­tion­al details about the Women To Watch Glob­al Awards cel­e­bra­tion will be avail­able in the com­ing weeks.