The Defence Women's Network (DWN) aims to create an inclusive and supportive network of people passionate about ending discrimination in the workplace by sparking discussion, celebrating the achievements of women and breaking down barriers. Now in its second year, the DWN Conference is an annual event that brings people together to explore the importance of workplace equity and stimulate discussion around the subject. This year's theme of Leadership and Self-Empowerment addressed how women can enhance their skills, manage the challenges of modern leadership and become the leaders they aspire to be.
In 2022, Vice President of L3Harris UK, Graeme Mackay, invited a small pool of representatives to attend the very first DWN Conference on behalf of L3Harris to gain a clearer understanding of how the business might support the event in future years. 2022's conference was host to a mix of over 1,000 virtual and in-person attendees, a hybrid format still impacted by the restrictions posed by Covid-19.
For Director of Strategic Marketing at L3Harris Intelligence and Cyber International, Louise Speaight, this was one of the first big networking events she had attended post-pandemic. I was highly impressed by the conference last year and almost immediately put a business case forward to our UK executive team outlining why we should look to sponsor it in 2023, she explained. As the defence industry is largely male dominated, networking at events such as these can often create an intimidating environment for many women. The DWN Conference felt like an incredibly safe and supportive environment for women and men alike.
A Collaborative Sponsorship across L3Harris UK
L3Harris was a silver sponsor of the 2023 DWN Conference. This sponsorship was made possible by valuable, collaborative contribution from every one of the company's UK businesses and representation from over twenty attendees. Such presence at the event emphasised the L3Harris commitment to meaningful and impactful social value activity, a dedication to driving the business' Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) agenda forward, and to raise greater awareness of the many exciting opportunities available to exceptional and emerging talent.
The L3Harris stand proved to be a thriving meeting hub, not only for those networking at the conference, but for members of the UK business to come together and exchange views and ideas. Having returned from the highly successful event, 2023's attendees are now actively advocating involvement from further members of the business within the UK and are already planning their contribution to 2024's conference.
Impactful Panels and Insightful Speeches
Across the event, many guest speakers and expert panels took to the stage and covered topics such as adopting a more optimistic attitude in the face of adversity, overcoming imposter syndrome and the importance of valuing and appreciating women of a certain age, or what the conference termed queenagers . These talks consisted of a mix of both women and male allies, although attendance as a whole did see a larger percentage of female delegates.
UK Chapter Chair of the L3Harris WE3 Employee Resource Group (ERG), Speaight noted: The queenagers talk in particular resonated with me. It's so important to ensure we're nurturing talent at all ages and clearly identifying further opportunities for career progression and continual job satisfaction. A woman's value within the workforce should never be forgotten when she reaches a certain age - there's always a lot more to give and a lot of invaluable experience she can draw upon!
Speaight also emphasised the vital role male allies need to play in instilling real change and the importance of having a range of different perspectives to innovate effectively as a team. Women should feel empowered by the diverse voices they're able to bring to a discussion. As the conference outlined - this needs to become a superpower rather than a weakness. What's more, we need to collectively get better at supporting each other, working together and celebrating our successes.
Congratulations to L3Harris Women in Defence Awards Nominees
On the subject of celebrating successes, complementary to involvement in the DWN Conference, L3Harris UK has also put forward several nominations for 2023's Women in Defence Awards. These awards present a prime opportunity for the business to celebrate some of our very top female talent, with each nomination carefully selected by members of the L3Harris WE3 ERG UK Chapter.
This year's nominations are:
Shahida Barick - Resolute Spirit Award
Rohini Panue - Inspirational Award
Sarah Bristow-Young - Outstanding Contribution Award
Emma Dunleavy-Harris and Alix Longmuir - Equity of Opportunity Award
Alix Longmuir - Champion for Maximising Talent Award
Rebecca Pailing - Most Collaborative Award
With a shortlist due to be announced in early September, the winners from each category will be revealed at the Women in Defence Awards dinner on Wednesday, 22 November in London.
L3Harris is dedicated to building a supportive, inclusive and equitable environment across our entire business and are proud of contributions to events such as the DWN Conference and the Women in Defence Awards. We look forward to further opportunities to support and celebrate our talented female colleagues in 2023 and beyond.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
The Defence Women's Network (DWN) aims to create an inclusive and supportive network of people passionate about ending discrimination in the workplace by sparking discussion, celebrating the achievements of women and breaking down barriers. Now in its second year, the DWN Conference is an annual event that brings people together to explore the importance of workplace equity and stimulate discussion around the subject. This year's theme of Leadership and Self-Empowerment addressed how women can enhance their skills, manage the challenges of modern leadership and become the leaders they aspire to be.
