2021 was an thrilling 12 months for drones, and it was an enormous 12 months for this handful of ladies particularly. Relying on who you ask, these ladies may be held responsibly for making 2021 so vital and thrilling for the drone business. These aforementioned ladies are the 2021 Girls To Watch honorees, they usually received well-deserved recognition in the beginning of January.
As a part of CES 2022, the Girls and Drones on-line drone group hosted its 2021 Girls To Watch awards in actual life. Nominations have been taken again in March 2021 however the award ceremony was met with delays on account of COVID-19. Nevertheless it lastly occurred within the first week of January in Las Vegas.
And with that, listed here are your 2021 Girls To Watch honorees (introduced in 2022):

- Bronwyn Morgan, Founding father of Xeo Air: Morgan gained an Entrepreneurship Award for her work because the founding father of Xeo Air, which offers AI primarily based drones on demand. The corporate additionally offers a knowledge analytics and autonomy platform for mission administration that connects shoppers in telecom, catastrophic response, oil and gasoline, vitality, development, civil infrastructure.
- Madison Jeffery, supervisor at Swoop Aero: Winner of the Public Security/Service award, Jeffery relocated from her house in Australia to Southern Malawi to handle Swoop Aero’s flagship medical drone logistics community, which connects over 1.5 million individuals with important medical provides.
- Karen DiMeo, CEO of AERODiMEO: Karen DiMeo walked away with a management award for her work advising shoppers on points associated to drones and different superior rising applied sciences within the business aerospace ecosystem. Karen has 30 years of expertise within the aviation business from each authorities and business management positions.
- April Lanotte, STEM lead for NASA’s Aeronautics Analysis Mission Directorate: Lanotte gained an training award for her work at NASA to make aerospace science extra accessible to extra lecturers and college students.
Recipients have been chosen for components together with their work as a task mannequin, their collaborative method, their affect in shaping the business and their success in driving change.
Past particular person 2021 Girls To Watch honorees, the awards ceremony additionally acknowledged excellent groups. These winners have been:
- Toni Drummond, CEO of World Aerial Administration Group : World Aerial Administration Group is an 100% women-owned and operated firm that works on turboprop and jet plane. This 12 months, the corporate’s drone vertical expanded closely, specializing in drone sanitizing and disinfecting of indoor and outside arenas, stadiums, colleges and different giant areas.
- Pharns Genece, CEO of USOG: Unmanned Methods Operations Goup (USOG) is a supplier of medical logistics options that makes use of drones.
- Michael Healander, CEO Airspace Hyperlink: Airspace Hyperlink is an organization that builds digital infrastructure required to assist drone use. 60% of its management group is feminine.
New to this 12 months’s awards was a tidy sum of prize cash. Honoree ladies and groups all obtained a $500 micro-grant.