Q. Why do you think the Women Leaders in Electronics Awards are important for the electronics sector, especially in recognising and elevating women's leadership?

Role models matter more than we sometimes admit. When a young woman sees another woman leading in a technical/engineering field, she also sees what is possible. That kind of change, however, doesn't happen overnight. It requires constant signalling to become a norm. At Red Pitaya, we think long-term about this. Girls start using our platform as early as high school, introducing them to engineering through hands-on projects. By the time they're choosing careers, "engineer" is already something they can picture themselves being. Awards like these do something similar; they make women's leadership visible, which sounds simple, but visibility is where change starts.

Q. Which trends or innovations do you think will shape the electronics industry in the upcoming year, and what do you see as the next "big thing" for women leaders in this space?

AI and quantum computing are obviously reshaping everything. As I see it, the biggest failures in tech haven't come from lack of intelligence but from lack of perspective. Research consistently shows that women leaders are more likely to challenge blind spots around ethics, inclusion, and downstream impact. In an era where AI, biotech, and digital infrastructure carry so much clout over daily life, that kind of leadership is urgently becoming necessary.

Q. How do awards like these help drive positive change, raise visibility, and support long-term growth, innovation, and inclusion across the industry?

The most innovative teams are diverse in gender, background, and perspective. Companies running on homogeneous "old boys' networks" struggle to adapt and inevitably fall behind. Women Leaders in Electronics Awards, as well as others like that, are a critical stepping stone to push the industry in the right direction. They signal that leadership doesn't favour any particular cohort over another, and they give companies a reason to pay attention to talent they might otherwise overlook. We've built our platform on the idea that opening doors leads to better outcomes than keeping them closed. The same logic applies to leadership. When you widen the pool, you don't dilute quality; on the contrary, you find talent that was always there but never had a stage.