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Four of Datacom's team members have been named as finalists for the 2024 Reseller News Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA).
The awards are the largest celebration of female excellence across the Australian and New Zealand technology channels.
The awards spotlight all career stages, in addition to inspiring entrepreneurs, creative thinkers and technical experts, as well as talent rising through the ranks and consistent high-performing individuals.
The awards are set to take place in Sydney, Australia on the 19th of September and in Auckland, New Zealand on the 2nd of October, where winners will be announced.
Datacom’s finalists were selected from a pool of over 500 entrants, in three categories – Graduate, Shining star and Achievement.
Bouchra Jihany – Intelligent Insights Technical Lead, was named as a finalist in Australia in the Graduate category, which recognises a standout graduate candidate who has leveraged apprenticeship programs to start a career within the ICT industry and has made an immediate and positive impact on the business through providing a fresh perspective and high levels of professionalism.
Following her initial studies in Morrocco, Bouchra completed a digital cadetship in cybersecurity at the Institute of Applied Technology NSW, studying while embarking on Datacom’s graduate programme on a part-time basis, where she excelled and was quickly offered the opportunity advance into a full-time position as the technical lead of a new practice.
Shortly after onboarding Bouchra into the practice, her manager was forced to take six months of leave due to illness, tasking her with learning a new technology and building out the foundations of a practice on her own – and she rose to the challenge, leveraging data and analytics to build out the foundations of a powerful service; seeing her attributed by the vendor as one of the most knowledgeable resources in the country.
Bouchra says she enjoys working with diverse and collaborative teams and is passionate about using data to empower decision-making and drive positive outcomes.
Wednesday Wilson – Information Management Associate Consultant, was also named as a finalist in the Graduate category, in New Zealand.
She joined Datacom as an intern in the cloud team through its partnership with TupuToa following her degree at the University of Waikato, before quickly transitioning to a graduate position as a cloud engineer in recognition of her capability.
Her unique, innate technical talent balanced by her personability and sense of humour means she continues to make a positive impression across the business as she works with different teams and amongst clients as she works to ideate, design and implement AI solutions. “She’s the future of tech,” says her manager, Daniel Piper.
She describes herself as a lifelong learner and is constantly upskilling herself, with ambitions of becoming a subject matter expert. She is also dedicated to supporting early careers and recruitment initiatives to help others embark on their tech career journey.
Tammy-Lynn Jones – GM Digital Engineering, was named as a finalist in New Zealand in the Shining Star category, which recognises an established candidate with a strong record of achievement, acknowledging excellence in spearheading company initiatives and driving strategic change.
Tammy-Lynn says throughout her career, she has found that stepping into challenging spaces brings the most reward. She consistently pushes herself and makes the most of all opportunities for growth, having utilised agile methods and rapid software delivery to make substantial impact in the business.
“I enjoy the variety of my role, with new challenges, customers and solutions to design and innovate on,” says Tammy-Lynn. “Encouraging and coaching my team to achieve their goals is incredibly fulfilling. It’s important to me to have strong relationships that create a fun and supportive working environment for everyone.”
She says championing women’s success is a focus as a mother, daughter and leader to other women.
“I am always impressed at what the women I work with achieve, their capability and professionalism. As a mother to daughters, I hope to be a good role model, inspire them to be confident and help them be the best that they can be. My own mother instilled a positive outlook in me, which has been instrumental in supporting me through challenging times and in solving problems.”
Suz Miller – Director Products and Propositions was named as a finalist in New Zealand in the Achievement category, which recognises a standout candidate who has delivered an unrivalled contribution to the ICT industry, evident through outstanding professional and personal achievements.
In her 25+ year career, the common thread has been Suz’s focus on using tech to transform organisations for the better – allowing them to enable their own teams with the right technology and tools, and to more readily serve their customers.
“Suz has an amazing ability to bridge technical and business context bringing people from all areas of expertise together to do wonderful things for our customers,” says Tracey Cotter-Martin – AD Futures and Insights at Datacom.
“She’s an accelerator for innovation and growth and is not only an icon for women in leadership but also renowned for being someone a lot of people want to work for. She is authentically ‘Suz’ at all times, consistently demonstrating that who we are and how we are is the superpower behind what we do.”
In total, Datacom put forward seven exceptional women for this year’s awards, including Bouchra, Wednesday, Tammy-Lynn and Suz, as well as Theresa Marwick, who was nominated in the Shining Star category, Tzarina Smith, who was nominated in the Innovation category and Anji Brennan, who was nominated in the Shining Star category.
Theresa is Datacom’s GM for Application Assurance and has made an incredible contribution in her 15 years with the business. Her passion, intelligence and innate leadership skills have seen her continually promoted as she succeeds in her career, with highlights including winning major customers, growing key areas of the Datacom business and contributing to the mentoring and growth of other women in the company.
“I love making a difference for our customers and working with our teams to deliver value in what they do every day,” says Theresa. “I thrive on the variety I get by being involved in a number of key customers, multiple teams, strategic change, and spanning different technologies and engagements.”
Tzarina Smith – Pega Lead Business Architect and Team Lead, played a key role in the successful delivery of a major project for a government agency. She continuously innovated while meeting critical delivery timelines, not just to provide “business value,” but to create a vital resource that enables a range of different stakeholders – with different levels of technical literacy.
“Tzarina takes a collaborative and consultative approach to finding and developing better solutions, combining her technical knowledge with her innovative thinking to problem solve and develop solutions that better serve people’s needs,” says her manager, Gareth Barton.
Anji Brennan, who is GM of Datacom’s PSG team in South and Western Australia, has doubled both market share and profitable return of PSG in SA since moving into her role, with a ‘prove the promise,’ customer-centric approach which has established her as a trusted advisor and sets a gold standard for her team.
Anji is well respected as a driven, talented, and capable leader. She is involved in the wider industry community as a South Australia council member for the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA). She provides ongoing support, skills development, coaching, co-selling and pastoral care for her team, which sees remarkable results.
