2008 Winners

2008 WIT's Women of the Year in Technology winners were announced at the awards dinner held on September 18, 2008 at the Cobb Galleria Centre. The awards gala was the place to be in the technology industry as we celebrated the success of all our nominees and recognized the outstanding contributions of winners in three categories:

  • Enterprise Organization
  • Mid-Market/Medium Organization
  • Emerging/Small Organization

These categories reflect the continuous enhancement of the award program and recognize the unique challenges, opportunities and achievements of women in each type of business environment.

2008 Finalists

 

2008 Winner - Enterprise Organization

Marianne JohnsonMarianne Johnson
SVP Global Technology
New Product Innovation
Equifax Inc.

Marianne Johnson is SVP of Global Technology New Product Innovation. In this role, she leads a team focused on creating and delivering new product innovation to drive growth across the Equifax Enterprise.

Since joining Equifax in 1996, Marianne has held a number of leadership positions. Recently, she led a global technology organization for marketing services of more than 125 associates. Her team was responsible for fulfilling the software development lifecycle and operating supercomputing parallel processing centers that deliver business intelligence solutions to customers worldwide. Prior to this global role, she served as VP of Equifax Enabling Technologies, a fast-growing business that provides loan origination and credit risk decisioning solutions to leading banks and financial institutions. Marianne also served as Assistant Vice President of Equifax Decision Power and Senior Director of Equifax Business Solutions where she was recognized with a GEM Award, one of the company’s most coveted technology honors.

A 19-year industry veteran, Marianne previously held management roles in the healthcare industry, including Advanced Receivables Strategy and Medaphis Corporation. At ARS, she was the Operations Officer responsible for launching a new division of active hospital receivables. During her tenure at Medaphis, Marianne led the consolidated business operations of four hospitals.

Marianne is an active member of Technology Association of Georgia, the Hospital Financial Management Association (HFMA), GlobalEXECWomen, and Women in Technology where she was selected as one of three finalists for the 2007 Women of the Year in Technology Award.

Marianne is dedicated to numerous community services and was an Equifax 2006/2007 Ambassador for the United Way. She sponsors "Food for the Poor," volunteers for the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and was recently recognized by the United States Marine Corps for her patriotism and support of our country’s troops in Iraq. She attended Barry University in Miami, Florida.

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2008 Winner - Mid-Market/Medium Organization

Theresa BrunassoTheresa Brunasso
Director of Technology Development
EMS Technologies

Principal Engineer, Theresa A. Brunasso, has played a key role in the advancement of EMS Technologies’ Defense & Space Systems’ Engineering Group. An integral part of the senior leadership team, Brunasso currently serves as the division’s Director of Technology Development.

Brunasso is a 30-year veteran in the field of Electrical Engineering. While at EMS, Theresa has provided innovative design and development expertise for D&SS heritage programs such as DarkStar, NSTAR, Milstar, Advanced EHF, IntelSat and Mars Science Lab. Her electrical engineering background makes her well suited in solutions definition and development and the application of that technology in the Commercial and National Defense Space markets.

Theresa joined D&SS in 1989, after serving as a Research Engineer for the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), one of the nation’s leading independent R&D organizations.

Prior to joining GTRI, Theresa spent two years as an Engineer for Teledyne MEC, an international leader in the design, development, and manufacture of high gain broadband amplifiers. Brunasso began her career in the U.S. Navy as an Instructor at the Consolidated Naval Electronic Warfare School in Pensacola, FL. She was awarded a graduate fellowship through the Air Force Thermionic Engineering - Research Program.

Theresa holds an Engineer’s Degree and M.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah, and a B.S. in Physics from the University of West Florida. She is a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Physics Honor Society.

In May 2005, she was the lead EMS author for a U.S. patent application titled, “A Compact Beam Former with Low Side Lobes.”

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2008 Winner - Emerging/Small Organization

Nadia ButlerNadia Butler
CEO, President, & Co-Founder
ESi

Nadia Butler is the CEO of ESI, the global leader in crisis information management technology. Nadia has over 25 years of experience in domestic and international business development, strategic planning, preparation of major proposals, and operations management of profit/loss centers---all with high-tech companies. In March of 2008, her company, ESI, was recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in America, having experienced a 30% growth in revenue without a sales force.

Nadia Butler says of her current position, “Everything in my life seems to have worked together to bring me to this spot.” In early childhood, she developed an appreciation for creative energy and the importance of technology. Her father was a researcher at Bell Labs when the initial superconductor work was being done; this often led to very unusual dinner conversations. She remembers her father’s prediction---years before even the invention of magnetic tape---that information eventually would be stored on plastic disks. She also remembers the joy her father’s work brought him because Bell Labs recognized and rewarded employees and found a way to harness their individual creativity. It is this same environment that Ms. Butler has re-created for programmers at ESi.

Ms. Butler has held executive and management positions in several technology firms:

  • Principal of NPDB, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in managing complex technology-driven procurements
  • Vice-president of operations for Thermo Technology Ventures and also a member of parent company Thermo Electron’s Executive Bench, a cadre of executive resources
  • Manager of business development for the French nuclear technology firm NUMATIC, Inc.
  • VP and manager of the Environmental Decision & Information Systems Department of Roy F. Weston, Inc.
  • Deputy manager for Jacobs Engineering Group
  • Project manager for Battelle Memorial Institute
  • Engineer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

She earned her B.S. degree in nuclear engineering at the University of Maryland, did graduate studies in energy and the environment at George Washington University and participated in Harvard University’s Entrepreneurship Program

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Past Winners
2006  Enterprise Business:
Susan Grant 
CNN
Small/Medium Business:
Wendy Reed 
InfoMentis
Not for Profit/Public Sector:
Jannet Thoms 
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA)
2005  Enterprise Business:
Pamela Pure
McKesson Corporation
Small/Medium Business:
Bonnie Herron
Intelligent Systems Corporation
Not for Profit/Public Sector:
Elaine Mitchell Norman
United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta
2004 Mylle Mangum
International Banking Technologies
2003 Sue Powers
Worldspan
2002 Elizabeth R. (Lee Lee) James
Synovus Financial Corporation
2001 Joan Herbig
XcelleNet
2000 Karen Robinson
Prime Point Media

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