Media release

Geneva, 15 September 2023

RightsTech Women (RTW) announces the election of Annariina Komljenovic to its board. RightsTech Women is a nonprofit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland that advances the human rights of girls and women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Through innovative training, research, and advocacy, RTW works with partners to get equal representation of girls and women in STEM education and employment by 2030. 

Annariina brings more than twenty-five years of experience working in sectors including technology, financial services, manufacturing and more. Her expertise includes organizational transformation, digitalization, innovation and cloud-based strategies.

Annariina brings a strong passion and demonstrated commitment to advancing girls and young women in STEM. She initiated and established the Builder Girls program together with Technical University Wien (Austria). In her previous work at Amazon Web Services, she was a Diversity, Inclusion & Equity leader (Austria) and helped coach a team of girls from the International School of Schaffhausen, who earned first place in the AWS GetIT program in Switzerland in 2022-2023.

“Catalyzing change in STEM isn’t just about innovation; it’s about equal opportunity and human rights,” said Annariina Komljenovic, RTW Board Member. “I’m thrilled to join RightsTech Women’s mission, where we envision a world where every girl’s STEM dream is a reality. Together, we’ll work to remove gender barriers inhibiting women’s progress in STEM as a matter of human rights.”

Annariina is currently Devoteam’s Country Director for the Amazon Web Services operations in Germany. Devoteam is an IT consulting company with 12,000 experts specialized in cloud technology in the EMEA region. Its experts support their clients to work with technologies from different cloud service companies, such as AWS.

“Each RightsTech Women board member to date has brought their unique experience and skills to the board,” said RTW’s Founder and Executive Director, Ellen Walker. “These crucial contributions have helped us achieve everything that RTW has achieved so far. Our whole team is excited to collaborate with Annariina as we work to reach 500,000 girls and women in 33 countries with RightsTech Women’s tech and human rights trainings.” RTW works with a range of technologies, including emerging ones.

The RightsTech Women team also bids outgoing board President, Alexandra Schafhauser ‘au revoir’. Alexandra steps down from her RightsTech Women board role as she returns to multilateral diplomacy, taking on a new role as a gender advisor at the European Parliament. RTW warmly thanks Alexandra for her help on many, many items over the last five years. Alexandra has volunteered with RightsTech Women since 2018, which speaks volumes about her dedication to gender equality in STEM. The RTW team wishes Alexandra the very best in this new challenge, where she is certain to achieve great things. 

Upon stepping down, Alexandra Schafhauser said, “I wish all of RTW a successful continuation with the important work the organisation carries out to increase the number of women and girls in STEM and am very happy to have worked together with such professional and inspiring people like you!”

As a result of this development, RTW is pleased to announce the election of current board member, Brice Copy of CERN, as Interim Board President, and of current board member and children’s human rights advocate, Arwa Al-Fakih, as Interim Board Secretary.

For information on the current open board recruitment process, please visit: https://rightstech.org/call-for-applications-join-the-rightstech-women-board/. 

Contact:  info (at) rightstech.org