Now in its sixth year, the NH Tech Alliance TechWomen|TechGirls Annual Awards acknowledged the accomplishments of three women who are making a significant impact in STEM education and/or professional STEM advancements for women throughout New Hampshire. This year’s program was delivered virtually and is available on the NH Tech Alliance YouTube Channel.
The 2020 awards recipients include:
Tech Educator of the Year, Kimberly Eckenrode. Kim is the Career and Technical Education Pathways Director at Nashua Community College. In this role, she promotes Career and Technical Education for students of all ages. Kim works with secondary schools to strengthen pathways from New Hampshire CTE Centers to NCC. At the college and professional level, Kim partners with local businesses and organizations to provide noncredit and credit learning opportunities for current and future employees through the Community & Corporate Training Center at Nashua Community College. During the pandemic Kim founded four new programs: Front End and Back End Coding Boot Camps, Big Data Developer, and a Youth Coding program geared toward 11 to 18-year-old learners.
You can watch the recording of the award presentation to Kim on the NHTA YouTube Channel.
Tech Student of the Year, Isha Mistry. Isha was very involved and active at Salem High School and graduated third in her class. She was a part of her high school’s FIRST robotics team for three years and Girls Who Code for four years. Through her involvement in robotics, she volunteered over 60 hours at the Granite State District Competition in 2019 and 2020.
Isha was a student mentor for the elementary school FIRST Lego League teams, and she later took up the position of coordinator for the FIRST Lego League high school mentors. In 2020, Isha won the National Center for Women and Information Technology State Honorable Mention in Aspirations in Computer Science award, and in 2021, she won the National Center for Women and Information Technology New Hampshire Affiliate Honorable Mention for Aspirations in Computing award.
Isha attends Rochester Institute of Technology and is majoring in Computer Science as a Freshman. She hopes to continue to make an impact on her community through technology as she had done in high school.
You can watch the recording of the award presentation to Isha on the NHTA YouTube channel.
Tech Professional of the Year, Melissa Jurkoic. Melissa has over 20 years of experience in tech and is currently the Chief Customer Experience Officer at Addapptation. She has volunteered at a variety of organizations locally and globally and is Co-Founder of Diversify Thinking. Diversify Thinking is an initiative focused on moving inclusion from a conversation to action. They enable leaders to create an equitable culture from the beginning. She is an active mentor to many young students helping them plan out their careers by using her own experience that brought her from developer to executive. Melissa is dedicated to helping young girls and women in tech.
You can watch the recording of the award presentation to Melissa on the NHTA YouTube channel.
Julie Demers, NH Tech Alliance Executive Director shared that “For 6 years the Alliance’s TechWomen annual awards have given us a platform to amplify the outstanding achievements of NH’s best and brightest in the technology sector. Telling the stories of remarkable women and giving them the recognition they deserve inspires future leaders to follow in their footsteps.
Thank you to our sponsors Cook, Little, Rosenblatt & Manson, the Factory on Willow, Cross Insurance, People’s United Bank, ARMI, WIPFLI, Manchester Boston Regional Airport, Sunrise Labs, and McLane Middleton.