Meet the 2023 Women in Content Marketing Awards Winners
We’re thrilled to introduce you to the winners of the 2023 Women in Content Marketing Awards (WICMAs). Concluding its fifth year, the Women in Content Marketing Awards celebrate incredible women across all levels and specialties who are defining the content marketing industry and creating a lasting impact through their leadership.
The 2023 Women in Content Marketing Awards honored women across four categories: Content Marketer of the Year, Marketing Leader of the Year, Rising Star, and Freelance Excellence.
As you’ll see, these women have forged new paths for their brands, clients, and the industry at large. They each bring a thoughtful and innovative approach to their work, and we’re thrilled to celebrate their accomplishments.
The Women in Content Marketing Awards are presented by Masthead Media, a full-service content marketing company founded and led by women.
WICMA Content Marketer of the Year
Holly Corbett
VP of Content
Consciously Unbiased
Tiffany Hamilton
Content Director
Salesforce
Sajel K Shah
Director, Public Relations, Influencer and Collaborations Marketing
American Eagle
Julie Shapiro
Editor In Chief
The Well by Northwell Health
Emily Silber
Executive Editor
Dotdash Meredith
Emily Silber is an Executive Editor for Foundry 360 at Dotdash Meredith (DDM) with more than eight years’ experience producing branded content for clients across all formats and industry sectors, specializing in health and personal finance. While at DDM, she’s worked on dozens of projects, including Millie, an online/print finance publication for women; Proto, an award-winning online/print publication about medicine; and CVS Retail. She was recently named Editor in Chief of Mosaic, a bi-monthly lifestyle magazine, and was a judge for the 2023 Content Marketing Awards.
Before joining the DDM team, Emily received her MS from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and worked as an editor for Psychology Today, Audubon Magazine, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center.
Sharon Stenger
Vice President, Content Marketing
Prudential
Marketing Leader of the Year
Maria Colón
Vice President, Marketing & Customer Experience, North America
De'Longhi America
Jennifer “JJ” Healan
Vice President of Brand Content & Culture
McDonald’s USA
“To thine own self be true” is a motto by which Jennifer “JJ” Healan lives her life. This unwavering belief has helped guide her throughout a multifaceted career building some of the world’s most iconic brands, creating a place for them in culture through industry-leading work.
She worked at The Coca-Cola Company for 15 years, both in North American and Global roles, where she led all advertising, content and creative excellence for the legacy brand, including new global campaigns for Coca-Cola, Fanta, Powerade and Schweppes. Jennifer started her most recent chapter in February 2020, when she joined the U.S. Marketing team for McDonald’s as Vice President of Brand, Content and Culture. This role includes all consumer touchpoints – national and local advertising, retail, design, social, digital and multi-cultural marketing. In her short tenure, Jennifer is honored to have found McDonald’s brand voice in the middle of a pandemic; to have shown up with the right words and the right actions: from distributing 13+MM Thank You Meals to first responders, healthcare workers and educators, to standing in solidarity with Black and Asian communities with the brand’s “One of Us” and “Stop Asian Hate” statements; and to have launched the iconic Famous Orders platform (Travis Scott, J Balvin, BTS, Saweetie, Mariah Carey, and this year’s latest evolution with Cardi B + Offset) which brought McDonald’s to the forefront of youth culture, as well as the newest platform idea that captured childhood love of the Happy Meal with a new experience for Gen Z through The Cactus Plant Flea Market Box.
Under Jennifer’s creative leadership, McDonald’s was named #2 on AdAge’s Marketer A-List in 2020 and 2022, and in 2023, made Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list. Also in 2021, she was awarded AdAge’s Brand Leader of the Year and named a Business Insider Rising Star. In 2022, EFFIE awarded McDonald’s the US Brand and Marketer of the Year and Jennifer received the AdWeek 50 Luminary Award.
Shama Hyder
CEO/Founder
Zen Media
Shama is the Founder & CEO of Zen Media, a B2B PR and marketing agency, serving tech-driven B2B companies globally. Shama has been a media correspondent for Fox Business, MSNBC, Bloomberg, CW, and she's one of the world’s leading experts on marketing and PR in the digital age. She has been named the “Zen Master of Marketing” by Entrepreneur Magazine and the “Millennial Master of the Universe” by Fast Company. She is the bestselling author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing, now in its 4th edition, and Momentum: How to Propel Your Marketing and Transform Your Brand in the Digital Age. An acclaimed keynote speaker, Shama has delivered keynotes in over 20 countries and spoken for recognized brands including Movado, Chase, Tupperware and Inc 5000. LinkedIn has named Hyder one of their “Top Voices” in Marketing & Social Media for four years in a row. She is also a member of the 2022 Class of Henry Crown Fellows within the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute.
Dipti Kachru
Global Chief Marketing Officer
Broadridge Financial Solutions
Katie Keil
Chief Marketing Officer
MyFitnessPal
Sangeeta Prasad
Chief Marketing Officer
Slalom Consulting
Sangeeta is the Chief Marketing Officer at Slalom. She joined Slalom as its very first chief marketing officer in 2020 and now leads a global team of 160 marketers in seven countries. Leveraging Slalom’s strong industry reputation as a consulting company that helps thousands of clients, Sangeeta is building a friendly, engaging brand that reflects the success of the company’s 13,000+ employees worldwide. This is the second time she’s joined a company as its first CMO – also at Russell Reynolds – bringing a strong portfolio of consumer and B2B experience from P&G, Chase and American Express. She lives with a global mindset having started her career in Australia and worked and lived across Asia for years.
Sangeeta is known for her courageous yet adaptable leadership style and ability to build consensus across many cultures. Most of all, her leadership style and work are anchored in Slalom’s differentiated “fiercely human” approach to client and partner relationships. Sangeeta has a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Mount Holyoke College and an MBA in marketing and finance from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Rising Star Award Winners
Kelly Meehan Brown
Senior Editor
Dotdash Meredith
Kelly Meehan Brown is an award-winning editor, social media manager and digital marketer. A multimedia Jill-of-all-trades, she works as a senior editor at Foundry 360, the content marketing agency of the country’s largest digital and print publisher Dotdash Meredith. While she heads up a wide and inventive range of personal finance and health programs, her particular focus is on Millie. This bold new magazine and digital platform is designed to help women achieve financial goals, and she has had a direct hand in the brand’s growth and success. Kelly spends her free time explaining Brooklyn life to her family back in Dublin, Ireland and parenting a demanding — but adorable — one-eyed cat with her husband.
Lauren Porter
Senior Creative Strategist
Bleacher Report
Lauren Porter is a strategic content specialist whose interest in entertainment, pop culture, and sports has influenced her digital storytelling and brand marketing expertise.
Currently at Bleacher Report as a Senior Creative Strategist, she’s developed creative concepts and brand pitch materials leading to successful partnerships featuring A-list athlete talent across social media and linear TV. She’s also influenced the go-to-market strategy, brand positioning, and design identity for B/R's first women-centered sports and culture brand, HighlightHER.
Before working in sports marketing, she was the digital assistant love and lifestyle editor and writer at ESSENCE, a premiere lifestyle, fashion, and beauty magazine for Black women.
In 2023, Lauren was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in sports, and in 2021, she was selected for the inaugural Hashtag Sports Creators of Color cohort by The Engagement Academy of Sports x Entertainment.
Freelance Excellence
Stephanie Conner
Owner/Principal
Active Voice Communications, LLC
Stephanie Conner is the owner of Active Voice Communications, where she and her team specialize in content strategy and copywriting for healthcare, technology, real estate and higher education clients.
With more than 20 years of content marketing experience, Stephanie has earned various industry awards for excellence in copywriting and strategy. She is also the host of the award-winning Kiddos in the Kitchen podcast.
In addition, Stephanie has worked as an associate faculty member at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, her alma mater. And for three years, she served on the board of the Phoenix chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, where she led community involvement programming and member communications.
Lauren Fritsky
B2B Freelance Content Marketer
Self-employed
Lauren Fritsky began her career as a print journalist in Philadelphia before running a successful travel blog, freelancing for major websites and overseeing content marketing for an IT company in Sydney, Australia. After returning to the US, she ran content for demand-side platform MediaMath for six years. In 2021, she began writing for SaaS companies, PR firms and content agencies on websites including Entrepreneur, Forbes, Fast Company and many more.
Lauren has been interviewed for the New York Times, USA Today, Salon and 10 News First Sydney. In 2023, she won the Freelance Excellence category in the Women in Content Marketing Awards. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from La Salle University and resides in New Jersey with her husband and two children.