Five leaders to be honored as winners of 2018 Women in Biometrics awards
30 October, 2018
category: Biometrics, Corporate, Government
Five women from the biometric identity and security industry were selected as the winners of the 2018 Women in Biometrics awards. The awards program, co-founded by the Security Industry Association (SIA) and SecureIDNews, recognizes each year a select group of honorees for their innovation, leadership, mentorship and dedication to the biometric industry.
These 2018 honorees have helped advance this important field through their impressive leadership, involvement, innovation and mentorship efforts across industry and government
The awards will be presented during the prestigious SIA Honors Night on Wednesday, Nov. 14 at the Current at Chelsea Piers in New York City. This year’s program was sponsored by IDEMIA, FindBiometrics and SIA’s Women in Security Forum.
“Biometric identity solutions and services are crucial to the security industry and to other industries like banking and health care,” said Don Erickson, SIA’s CEO. “These 2018 honorees have helped advance this important field through their impressive leadership, involvement, innovation and mentorship efforts across industry and government.”
Winners: 2018 Women in Biometrics awards
The five winners for 2018’s awards, selected from a global pool of nominees, are:
Kelly Gallagher, Senior Account Manager, NEC Corporation of America
With more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement and biometric technologies, Gallagher has focused on the cutting edge of forensic science. In her current role, she has helped guide successful AFIS deployments for agencies including Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. She is a member of AFIS Internet, organizes the annual AFIS Internet Users Conference, and holds several certifications from the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and more.
Lisa MacDonald, Director, Identity Capabilities Management Division, Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
A leader in DHS’ biometrics organization, Macdonald led a successful campaign to garner $200 million for a replacement biometric system for DHS and spearheaded the source selection. She designed and executed repeatable strategic planning and implementation processes for both DHS and the Department of the Army’s biometrics organizations.
Colleen Manaher, Executive Director, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), DHS
In her work at CBP, Manaher strengthened public-private partnerships with the airlines, airports and the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) around the use of biometrics in air travel to enhance the customer experience. She is helping to create a biometric matching service that air travel stakeholders can use wherever identity verification is needed – check-in, bag drop, TSA or an airline lounge. She is an integral part of the success of CBP’s biometric mission at 14 entry and 15 exit locations, with more on the way.
Lora Sims, Senior Biometric Examiner, Ideal Innovations, Inc. (I-3)
An International Association for Identification-certified tenprint examiner and senior biometric examiner at I-3, Sims supports the Army’s Defense Biometric and Forensic Agency in its examination services branch in fingerprint, face and iris compositions. She is a co-author of a training-to-competency program on facial identification and comparisons and the main author of the facial identification training curriculum I-3 offers worldwide. She has trained hundreds of individuals in the facial identification field, including intelligence analysts, police officers and forensic artists. She chairs both the Facial Identification Scientific Working Group and the Organization of Scientific Area Committees’ Facial Identification Subcommittee.
Anne Wang, Director of Biometric Technology Research & Development, Gemalto Cogent
Since joining Gemalto Cogent (formerly Cogent Systems) in 1991, Wang has supported and directly contributed to many of its top-ranking biometric algorithms. She has also contributed to the design of numerous biometric matching software development kits and multi-modal biometric identification devices being used around the globe. Most recently, she has led the development efforts for groundbreaking touchless biometric capture technology. She contributed her expertise in multimodal biometrics to the United Kingdom visa program. Wang participates in NIST evaluation of Gemalto Cogent fingerprint, facial and iris algorithms and participates on several biometric standards subcommittees.
Each year, the Women in Biometrics Awards recognize the efforts of top female leaders helping drive the biometric identity and security industry. Nominees and past winners include those working for biometric companies, peripheral suppliers, system integrators, academia, government or security and IT departments at a variety of organizations.
