Women working in the broadcast, media technology and service sectors were celebrated at yesterday’s Rise awards at the Troxy in London.
Channel 4’s Sue Farrell took home the prestigious Woman of the Year award, sponsored by Zixi. Other winners came from media organisations including Sky, Globecast, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Now in its seventh year, the awards, staged in partnership with Sky and Gravity Media, celebrated winners in 17 categories and received over 400 nominations from across the world.
Comedian Laura Lexx hosted the ceremony attended by people from Australia, the United States, Canada, France, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands.
Rise business manager, Deborah Cross, said: “Now in its seventh year, the Rise Awards continues to go from strength to strength with many more companies bringing clients with them this year to share the Rise message.
“The 2025 ceremony was the culmination of a challenging task for our judging panel, selecting this year’s winners from an exceptionally high calibre of nominees.
“Congratulations to all those who took home an award. We feel privileged to champion the talents of these inspirational women and diversity advocates.”
The winners of the Advocate award, which was sponsored by Techex, were Levant Ozparlak from Irdeto, and Scott Kerr from Sky.
In the business leader category, which was sponsored by IBC, Liz McParland from Globecast was the winner.
In the business operations category, sponsored by Encompass, the winner was Laura Martín-Moralejo from Warner Bros. Discovery.
Channel 4 won the Company Award for Investment in Women, which was sponsored by Ross Video.
For the influencer category, sponsored by Disguise, Mirusha Jegatheeswaran from ITV was the winner.
In the marketing category, sponsored by DCE Agency, Margot Ouali from Appear won.
For the product innovation award, sponsored by Clear-Com, Regina Poniridis from Caretta Research won.
In the product support engineer category, sponsored by appear, Brittany Shoemake from Warner Bros. Discovery was the winner.
The winner of the project management or delivery (vendor/service provider) category, which was sponsored by Globecast was Jane Lavineway from Iredto.
In the project management or delivery, end-user category, sponsored by Warner Bros. Discovery, Sarah Thornley from Sky UK won.
In the R&D engineer category, sponsored by AWS, Shufei He from Irdeto was the winner.
For the Rising Star Award, sponsored by RedBee Media, the winners were Patrycja Foltynowicz from Limitless Broadcast and Sreekala Kallidil from Irdeto.
In the sales category, sponsored by Mimir Saga (part of the Fonn Group), Juliet Bayliss from Globecast was the winner.
The Student/Apprentice award, sponsored by SMPTE, Juliette Maes, from Media Distillery was the winner.
In the technical operations category, sponsored by Vizrt, Jayne Hilton, from Globecast won.
A Special Recognition Award was presented to Nicki Fisher for her services to the broadcast industry and Rise.
Rise was formed in 2017 to support and promote women working in the non-craft part of the broadcast media technology industry, including operations, engineering, sales, marketing, and business.
