Get to know the Judges

Our panel of judges includes industry leaders, innovators, and trailblazers in CX and technology.

We’re thrilled to reveal the finalists for the Inspiring Women in CX Awards 2026!

These remarkable individuals have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to Customer Experience: breaking boundaries, leading with empathy, and lifting others as they rise.

Chosen from more than 550 nominations from around the globe, our finalists represent the very best of our community, from the women leading the way in CX to the allies championing them. They include innovative change-makers, passionate advocates, and trailblazing leaders making a real impact in their organisations and communities.

Congratulations to every one of our finalists!

Meet the Ally of the Year Finalists

In recognition of the individuals who have taken sustained, practical action to advance women in Customer Experience. This person has used their influence, position or access to remove barriers, create opportunities, amplify women’s expertise or challenge practices that limit women’s participation and progression.

Abigail Anaya

Customer Success Manager
Quest Software

  • Abby Anaya is a Customer Success leader with 9+ years of experience helping people and organisations navigate complex technology and create meaningful paths for growth. Throughout her career, she has built customer success programs, developed teams and created stronger paths for women and first-generation professionals to grow in technology. She is also the founder of Cafecito Collective, a community that helps Latinas and first-generation professionals navigate corporate culture, advocate for themselves and build the confidence to pursue opportunities they once thought were out of reach.

Gareth Rees

Group Director
Kantar

  • Gareth Rees is Head of CX Partnership Services, Insights UK at Kantar, working within the UK Research Group and Insights EMEA. His role spans client delivery, customer experience, strategic partnerships and the development of insight-led services. He has particular experience across customer experience, strategic insight, research and senior client relationships, alongside responsibility for leading and developing teams. Gareth has also led Kantar’s work around its Inclusion Index, a workplace inclusion benchmark designed to move beyond representation measures to understand people’s lived experience.

Jason Sustar

Chief Operating Officer
Trademark Global

  • Jason Sustar is Chief Operating Officer of Trademark Global, a company that builds, acquires and scales consumer brands across home, outdoor, kitchen and tools, sold through retailers including Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot and Target. An engineer at heart, he leads the teams that power those brands, including warehouse operations, sales operations, technology and CX, and drives the company’s AI efforts, such as the launch of its Agentic Virtual Agent. A committed ally, he champions women leaders across Trademark Global, sharing his stage, his seat at the table and his voice so theirs are heard.

Martin Teasdale

Founder
The Team Leader Community & Get Out of Wrap

  • Martin Teasdale is a passionate advocate for the contact centre industry and the people in it. He founded The Team Leader Community, helping contact centre team leaders learn, connect and grow together, and Get Out of Wrap, a podcast and media platform giving people, brands and organisations a voice to share their experiences and stories.

Meet the Customer Champion Finalists

In recognition of the women who ensured that customers' needs, experiences, and outcomes influence organisational decisions. She may work in customer service, success, operations, product, insight, marketing, or another function, but has shown the courage and persistence to challenge decisions, represent overlooked customer needs, and turn customer advocacy into practical action.

Jane Hawkes

Consumer Champion
Lady Janey Ltd

  • Jane Hawkes, known as Lady Janey, is an independent consumer champion, customer service consultant and media commentator specialising in consumer rights and customer experience. A regular contributor to national TV, radio and press, she has appeared on BBC Breakfast, Channel 4 Dispatches, Watchdog and Rip Off Britain. She also works with businesses to achieve the highest standards of customer service, drawing on her consumer expertise to help organisations better understand the customer perspective.

Jessica Jagodzinski-Tahiri

Head of Customer Experience
GOAT Foods

  • Jessica is Head of Customer Experience at GOAT Foods, home to brands like Licorice.com and Chocolate.com. Before CX, she spent years in education and child care, and trained in ASL interpreting- experiences that taught her to listen closely and meet people where they are. She brings that same heart to customer care, leading a small but mighty team across nine brands, turning everyday conversations into insight for the whole business, and using AI thoughtfully without losing the human touch. Her belief: customers are the lifeline of a company, and customer care keeps the pulse.

Karen Lam

Director, Customer Support
Top Hat

  • Karen Lam is a dynamic customer experience (CX) and support leader based in the Greater Toronto Area, currently serving as the Director of Customer Support at Top Hat, an interactive higher education software company. Karen specializes in scaling support operations, championing customer advocacy, and building high-performing service teams. Throughout her career, Karen has focused on transforming customer feedback into scalable systems and often writes about integration of AI workflows into support operations to enhance service delivery.

Kat Richards

Associate Director, Strategy
Digitas

  • Kat Richards is a CX strategist who leads with empathy, systems thinking and a commitment to inclusion. As Associate Director of Experience Strategy at Digitas, she brings 14+ years across CX, UX research and product design for healthcare, financial services and consumer brands. She helps shape Digitas’ Accessibility Center of Excellence, now spanning inclusive and ethical AI, and co-authored an ACM paper on preparing UX practitioners to design with AI. She also advises femtech company FoXX Health and co-founded Badass Mamas, a community for working mothers. Her focus is on experiences that earn trust from the people most often overlooked.

Patricia Mae Calingasan

Subject Matter Expert / Supervisor
Trademark Global

Rosadaliz Berríos

Senior Vice President of Customer Experience and Operations
Medical Card System

  • Rosadaliz Berríos is SVP of Customer Experience and Operations at MCS, leading Customer Service, Experience, Retention, and Community Initiatives supporting over 660,000 customers. With 23+ years across Medicare, Medicaid, and Commercial health plans, she leads strategies that strengthen service, satisfaction, retention, and community impact. An industrial engineer with an MBA, she has completed executive education at Kellogg, IDEO U, and Harvard Business School. A proud mother and caregiver, she enjoys arts and crafts.

Shaheen Qureshi

Client Experience Executive - MENA
CIPD Middle East

  • Shaheen Qureshi is a Client Experience professional with a strong focus on customer journey improvement, stakeholder engagement and service delivery across the MENA region. In her current role with CIPD, she leads the Individual Experience Assessment offering across the region, supporting experienced people professionals through their journey to professional membership.
    Her work focuses on improving the end-to-end candidate experience, increasing awareness of professional pathways, strengthening customer support. Shaheen is CCXP certified and CIPD qualified, and is passionate about human-centred experience.

Shalini Arya

Customer Success Manager
Blackdot Solutions

  • Shalini is a strategic Customer Success leader with 8+ years of experience helping enterprise clients achieve measurable outcomes across SaaS, fintech and conversational AI. She is passionate about elevating the role of customer success within organisations. She specialises in turning customer insights into actionable strategies, influencing product direction, and building programmes that scale both value and advocacy.

Sibusiso Nyasulu

Head of CX
NBS BANK

  • Sibusiso is a seasoned Marketing and Customer Experience executive with over 15 years of executive management experience across telecommunications and banking. She is passionate about transforming customer journeys and building customer-centric organisations where CX drives growth, loyalty and measurable ROI. She brings strong strategic, commercial and leadership expertise, with a proven record of translating customer insight into business value. Sibusiso has received several industry accolades and serves on various boards, contributing to strategy, governance and organisational performance.

Sylvia Mungai

CX Partner, Business Engagements Manager
NCBA GROUP PLC

  • Sylvia Mungai is a high-impact Customer Experience leader and collaboration catalyst who drives business growth through strategic alignment, cross-functional collaboration and customer-led transformation. She brings together frontline and support teams to break down silos and turn a shared customer vision and insights into coordinated action.

Meet the Customer Experience Transformation Finalists

In recognition of the women who have led substantial organisational change to deliver better outcomes for customers, employees and the business. She has moved beyond isolated improvements to reshape the systems, processes, capabilities, behaviours or operating models that determine how experiences are delivered.

Agnieszka Obstarczyk

Head of CRM & Marketing Automation
Triverna Sp. z o.o.

  • Head of CRM & Marketing Automation at Triverna and Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional™. Motto: “Human-first automation”. Agnieska translates customer needs into technology and designs loyalty strategies that drive measurable growth.

Aleksandra Pilniak

Customer Centric Transformation Manager
Kramp

  • Aleksandra Pilniak is a transformation, change and customer experience professional with 11+ years of international experience. She specialises in turning strategy into meaningful change by connecting customer experience, employee experience, organisational culture and human behaviour. A published author, experienced facilitator and speaker, Aleksandra believes that people aren’t the soft side of transformation - they’re the execution layer.

Caroline van den Bos

Insight and Client Experience Director
LLoyd's Register (LR)

  • Caroline van den Bos helps organisations make better decisions and achieve better performance. She works at the intersection of customer experience, market insight, competitive intelligence and transformation, helping leadership teams understand where to focus, where to invest and how to deliver meaningful change.

    What sets her apart is her ability to operate at both the strategic and practical level: shaping vision and direction while staying close enough to delivery to make sure outcomes are realised.

Caroline Quinlan

Director of Customer Experience
Unum

  • A customer experience leader who is passionate about understanding what customers really need and turning that insight into better, simpler experiences. Caroline's career went across financial services, energy and membership organisations creating CX strategy, journey design, research, transformation and customer-led change. Caroline is also deeply interested in how technology and AI are changing customer behaviour and expectations, which she is exploring further through studies in Cyber Psychology.

Corinne Manzatucci

Head Of Customer Experience
Ocado Logistics

  • Corinne is a senior customer strategy and transformation leader with over 20 years of experience, including 10+ years specialising in CX. Heading up CX at Ocado Logistics, she simplifies operational challenges and unites cross-functional teams around a shared vision to build capability, elevate standards, and drive measurable business outcomes.

Maureen Ndegwa

Senior Manager, Service Excellence
Equity Bank

  • Maureen Ndegwa doesn't just join organizations, she leaves them better. Over 12 years across insurance, manufacturing, banking and renewable energy, she has rebuilt customer experience from the ground up: enterprise CRM at Britam, a reinvented service model at Chloride Exide, a bank-wide VOC engine at Family Bank, and a $750K revenue-generating CX function at Engie. Now Senior Manager, Service Excellence at Equity Bank Kenya, she spearheaded RPA automation cutting SQA turnaround by 87%. A Six Sigma Green Belt, she sits on the Africa CX Leaders Forum's CX Technology & AI Commission.

Monicah Mukami

Head, Customer Experience & Success
Smart Applications International Ltd

  • A customer experience and retention leader with over a decade of experience in strategic relationship management, customer retention and business growth. As Head of Customer Success & Experience at Smart Applications International Ltd, she leads CX transformation, embedding customer-centric strategies, Voice of the Customer and omnichannel service across 12 African markets. She champions the integration of customer experience, operational excellence and measurable business value to strengthen loyalty, improve service delivery and drive sustainable growth.

Rosadaliz Berríos

Senior Vice President of Customer Experience and Operations
Medical Card System

  • Rosadaliz Berríos is SVP of Customer Experience and Operations at MCS, leading Customer Service, Experience, Retention, and Community Initiatives supporting over 660,000 customers. With 23+ years across Medicare, Medicaid, and Commercial health plans, she leads strategies that strengthen service, satisfaction, retention, and community impact. An industrial engineer with an MBA, she has completed executive education at Kellogg, IDEO U, and Harvard Business School. A proud mother and caregiver, she enjoys arts and crafts.

Sarah Bull

Head of Consumer Experience
Former Deckers Brands

  • Sarah Bull is a retail and customer leader who shapes strategy, customer experience, growth and operational performance across international businesses including John Lewis, UGG, HOKA and Teva. A people-first leader, she creates clarity, builds trust and gives teams the ownership to turn vision into meaningful results.

Silvia Montero Collado

Founder and CCO
Customera

  • Silvia Montero Collado is a customer experience advisor and the founder of Customera, a consultancy helping B2B companies turn client experience into retention and growth. As Head of Global Client Experience at Xerox, she led the company’s client experience transformation: she built its first global program, lifted Net Promoter Score 11 points in the Americas, brought AI speech analytics into client listening and led the CX side of the Xerox and Lexmark integration. Earlier, she ran a CX program across 81 countries at HP and built businesses in Brazil. She works in five languages and is based in Barcelona.

Meet the Customer Insight and Intelligence Finalists

In recognition of the women who have transformed customer understanding into better decisions and demonstrable action. Her work may involve research, Voice of the Customer, behavioural insight, customer data or analytics, but its value lies in what changed because of that understanding—not simply in producing the insight.

Irina Micov

Analyst Ocado
Logistics

  • Irina Micov is a Data Analyst in Customer Experience at Ocado Logistics, where she helps turn customer feedback and operational data into practical insight for the business. With a background in journalism, digital media and analytics, she combines analytical thinking, storytelling and a strong focus on data quality. Her work spans CX reporting, customer comment analysis, automation, survey methodology and deeper investigations linking customer experience with operational performance.

Jasmine Walia

SVP and Global Market Leader
TTEC

  • Jasmine Walia is SVP and Global Market Leader of Technology, Communications and Media at TTEC, where she leads CX transformation for global tech, media and telecom brands, and will soon move into a global delivery leadership role. In more than 25 years in the contact center industry, she has led 15 international contact centers with 8,000+ employees across the Americas and Asia Pacific, headed Amazon’s global consumer support services, and served as Global Market Leader for two Alorica verticals. She is known for turning client insight into measurable gains in sentiment, growth and profitability.

Joyce Mi

Founder and CEO
GGC Games

  • Joyce Mi is Founder and CEO of GGC Games and author of Game Operations and Global Expansion: Strategies, Methods, and Skills (China Machine Press). At Zynga, she connected player research and million-DAU analytics with A/B/N product decisions; a historical project improved D1 retention by 700 basis points. At Gameloft, she built regional operating frameworks across 10+ studios and a 500+ person cross-functional network. She now applies evidence-led game operations through GGC and OpsGo.

Julie Padilla

Sr. Manager, Student Success
Cengage

  • Julie Padilla is a Senior Manager of Student Success at Cengage, where she leads work focused on improving learner outcomes through insight, innovation, and human-centered support. A former educator and school leader who transitioned into EdTech, Julie remains deeply passionate about expanding opportunity through education and empowering others to thrive. She serves on Syracuse University’s School of Education Advisory Board. Julie lives in Central New York with her husband, two children, and dog.

Karen Lam

Director, Customer Support
Top Hat

  • Karen Lam is the Director of Customer Support at Top Hat, where she leads support operations that help educators and students make the most of their teaching and learning experiences. Her approach combines empathy, active listening, and practical problem-solving with a focus on building effective teams and improving the customer experience.

Rosadaliz Berríos

Senior Vice President of Customer Experience and Operations
Medical Card System

  • Rosadaliz Berríos is SVP of Customer Experience and Operations at MCS, leading Customer Service, Experience, Retention, and Community Initiatives supporting over 660,000 customers. With 23+ years across Medicare, Medicaid, and Commercial health plans, she leads strategies that strengthen service, satisfaction, retention, and community impact. An industrial engineer with an MBA, she has completed executive education at Kellogg, IDEO U, and Harvard Business School. A proud mother and caregiver, she enjoys arts and crafts.

Stephanie McBride

Director, Market Research and Customer Insights
One Inc

  • Stephanie Davila is Head of Research & Insights at One Inc, where she leads Voice of the Customer, market research, and customer intelligence across the insurance payments ecosystem. With 16 years in CX, she has built programs spanning NPS, market studies, journey insights, and industry research, translating customer and market intelligence into product priorities and executive strategy. Her work has helped drive a 40+ point year-over-year NPS gain while expanding VoC across the customer journey. She is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt with deep experience in data analytics and cross-functional improvement.

Sylvie Williams

Director, Consultant Delivery
CGI Federal

  • Sylvie K. Williams is a CX leader with over two decades of experience in user research and service design across three federal agencies. She spearheaded efforts to ensure millions of Americans’ voices directly shaped better services. A champion of accessible, inclusive public services, she has embraced a culture of listening, accountability, and transparency. She is passionate about public service and believes government works best when it truly listens to those it serves.

Vidiana Wambugu

Group Head, Customer Experience
APA Apollo Group

  • Vidiana Wambugu is a customer experience and operations leader driving service excellence across the insurance and real estate sectors. At APA Apollo Group, Acorn Holdings Limited and Resolution Insurance, she has led multifunctional teams to reimagine customer journeys, accelerate turnaround, lift satisfaction and scale service through strategic redesign and expansion. A Certified Customer Centricity Expert, Customer Journey Mapping Architect, Lean Six Sigma practitioner and Member of the Institute of Customer Experience Kenya, she is committed to building inclusive, customer-first cultures and developing future leaders.

Windy Locke

Head of Customer Experience
AGFA Healthcare

  • Windy Locke is a healthcare technology executive with 20+ years of experience transforming the intersection of clinical practice, technology and customer experience. With a clinical background in Radiologic Technology, she brings a unique understanding of healthcare professionals and the organizations they serve. As Head of Customer Experience North America at Agfa HealthCare, Windy leads initiatives that turn customer insight into action, strengthen relationships and drive business outcomes. She is passionate about innovation, customer advocacy and reimagining how healthcare technology organizations serve their customers.

Meet the Employee Experience Finalists

In recognition of the women who have improved the conditions in which people serve customers and do their best work. She has redesigned employee journeys, tools, processes, leadership practices or working environments to remove friction and enable better outcomes.

Faye Carlos

Senior Customer Experience Manager
Trademark Global

  • Faye Carlos is a Senior CX Manager at Trademark Global, based in the Philippines, where she has spent more than nine years building and leading customer experience teams. Her work spans e-commerce operations, escalations and process improvement, but at its heart is people leadership: a belief that the way people are led shapes the way customers are cared for.

Lorena Lovric

Director of Customer Experience
Trademark Global

  • Accomplished Director of Customer Experience driving global AI-enabled CX transformation. At Aterian, she architected a unified ecosystem on Genesys Cloud, integrating voice, digital, automation, and workforce engagement into one operating model, work that earned the 2025 Genesys Level Up Award for Empathetic Experience Generation. A former frontline agent turned executive, she leads with disciplined execution and an unapologetically agent-first philosophy, proving AI performance and humanity are not trade-offs. Committed to continuous learning, she is currently studying finance at Harvard Extension School.

Patrycja Pachowska

Global Workplace Manager
Docplanner / ZnanyLekarz

  • Patrycja Pachowska specialises in workplace strategy and creating work environments that support business goals, collaboration and employee engagement. She leads the global workplace function at Docplanner, developing offices and workplace standards across 13 countries. She has more than a decade of experience in workplace, office experience and workspace transformation.

Meet the Experience Design Finalists

In recognition of the women who have transformed customer understanding into better decisions and demonstrable action. Her work may involve research, Voice of the Customer, behavioural insight, customer data or analytics, but its value lies in what changed because of that understanding—not simply in producing the insight.

Karen Lam

Director, Customer Support
Top Hat

  • Karen Lam is the Director of Customer Support at Top Hat, where she leads support operations that help educators and students make the most of their teaching and learning experiences. Her approach combines empathy, active listening, and practical problem-solving with a focus on building effective teams and improving the customer experience.

Rosadaliz Berríos

Senior Vice President of Customer Experience and Operations
Medical Card System

  • Rosadaliz Berríos is SVP of Customer Experience and Operations at MCS, leading Customer Service, Experience, Retention, and Community Initiatives supporting over 660,000 customers. With 23+ years across Medicare, Medicaid, and Commercial health plans, she leads strategies that strengthen service, satisfaction, retention, and community impact. An industrial engineer with an MBA, she has completed executive education at Kellogg, IDEO U, and Harvard Business School. A proud mother and caregiver, she enjoys arts and crafts.

Stephanie McBride

Director, Market Research and Customer Insights
One Inc

  • Stephanie Davila is Head of Research & Insights at One Inc, where she leads Voice of the Customer, market research, and customer intelligence across the insurance payments ecosystem. With 16 years in CX, she has built programs spanning NPS, market studies, journey insights, and industry research, translating customer and market intelligence into product priorities and executive strategy. Her work has helped drive a 40+ point year-over-year NPS gain while expanding VoC across the customer journey. She is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt with deep experience in data analytics and cross-functional improvement.

Timeline of Events

September 10th, 2026

October 23rd, 2026

November 2nd, 2026

December 1st, 2026

Nominations Open

Nominations Close

Finalists Announcement

Winners Announced

Nominate now