The winners of this year’s Women in Defence Awards were announced at a gala dinner in Canberra on July 11, 2019. Held at the National Arboretum in Canberra, the event brought close to 400 of Defence and industry’s leading women and men together to recognise and celebrate the achievements of 195 nominees across seven categorie s, including the 37 finalists and seven winners. The Hall of Fame inductee was also announced in Department of Veteran Affairs Secretary Liz Cosson. After a substantial military career in Army that saw her rise to become the organisation’s first female Major General, Liz is now heading up the Department of Veteran Affairs, continuing her mentoring work for the next generation of military and APS leaders. She noted in her acceptance speech that when she joined the ADF in 1978 only 23 per cent of Army roles were open to women. Now, 100 per cent of roles are available for all Australians. The full list of winners is as follows:

• Communications: Amanda Jane Scott of RAAF
• Legal/Contracting: Tarnya Cooper of BAE Systems Australia
• Project Management: Jane Hunter of Boeing Australia
• Engineering: Corina Glavan of the Department of Defence
• Technical Trade: Warrant Officer Class Two Dayle Lovell of RAN
• People and Culture: Tanja Johnston of the Australian National Veterans Arts Museum
• Rising Star: Taylah Griffin of Boeing Australia.

“It is really wonderful to be a room of so many amazing women and their allies to celebrate the very real benefits of diversity in action,” ADM Managing Editor Katherine Ziesing said in her opening remarks. “We have doubled every measure of this awards program in just a year thanks to the support of the Defence community.” ADM would like to congratulate a stellar field of nominated women, finalists and of course the winners in this program and acknowledge our generous sponsors of SYPAQ, Airbus, Naval Group, ASC, Boeing, Broadspectrum, Leidos, and QinetiQ.”