SuperWomen of FMS Leadership Award


SuperWomen of FMS was created to promote and celebrate the success of women in the industry with the goal of encouraging more women to enter and succeed in our marketplace.

The SuperWomen of FMS Leadership Award recognizes women who have shown outstanding leadership in the growth, development and use of flash memory and storage technologies.

Each year, we proudly honor a new trailblazer to join this distinguished community of industry visionaries.

Judges will be looking for those who have:

  • Created and/or promoted an important flash technology or system (or a technology that flash superseded)
  • Created and/or promoted a significant new market category or offering with measurable impact on the industry
  • Shown leadership of a company, division, or business effort.
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SuperWomen of FMS - Roll of Honour

Roll of Honour

Past SuperWomen of FMS Leadership Award Winners

2025 Award Winner
Rita Gupta
Server System Architecture Fellow, AMD

A pioneering force behind AMD's CXL innovations and co-chair of the CXL Consortium Memory Systems Workgroup. Rita is recognized for her technical expertise, strategic leadership, and unwavering commitment to mentorship and diversity in technology.

2024 Award Winner
Harriet Coverston
CTO, Versity Software

For her decades of contributions to file systems and archival storage, including developing QFS and SAM-QFS. Her work proved the feasibility of integrating high-performance archiving into large-scale system implementations.

2023 Award Winner
Amy Fowler
VP and GM of FlashBlade, Pure Storage

For creating the operational design and strategy for the FlashBlade business unit. Amy is a dedicated leader in empowering women in IT, heading the Women@Pure North America Chapter.

2022 Award Winner
Dr. Yan Li
Vice President, Western Digital

Holding over 200 patents, Dr. Li is best known for developing the first triple-layer-cell (TLC) in 2008 and her work on All-bit-line Architecture, which significantly reduced the cost of Flash memory.

2020 Award Winner
Barbara Murphy
Vice President, WekaIO

A pioneer in Serial ATA for enterprise storage, Barbara has led high-performance computing firms through successful transitions, establishing WekaIO as a key provider of file system software for AI and HPC.

2019 Award Winner
Calline Sanchez
Vice President, IBM

Led the delivery of next-generation Flash-optimized enterprise storage systems at IBM. She is an active advocate for STEM and diversity through her work with WITI and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.

2018 Award Winner
Amber Huffman
Fellow, Intel

The driving force behind starting and chairing the NVM Express (NVMe) Working Group. She also led the development of AHCI and was the second woman at Intel to be named an Intel Fellow.

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