We’re thrilled to announce that Bela Stepanova, VP of Product here at Iterable, has been named a Silver winner of a Stevie® Award for Woman of the Year in Technology in the eighteenth annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.
The Stevie® Awards for Women in Business honor women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run–worldwide. Hailed as the world’s premier business awards, The Stevie Awards’ Women in Business categories saw more than 1,500 entries this year for consideration in more than 100 categories, including Executive of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Company of the Year, Startup of the Year, Women Helping Women, and Women-Run Workplace of the Year. Female leaders from companies like AIG, IBM, So. Cal Gas, AWS and AT&T were also on the list!
“I’m honored and humbled to be recognized as a Woman of the Year in Technology! It’s a testament to the work our team is doing to lead in a more equitable and exciting future in tech.
Our team focuses on bringing cutting edge technologies to brands that help them build long lasting relationships with consumers. It was an exciting and busy year for us at Iterable. We launched brand new AI products, released numerous new product capabilities, and created the next generation of Iterable’s user experience. We are passionate about making marketers’ jobs easier and better every day. When our customers win, we win.
Amongst the exponential business growth, I’m particularly proud of the thoughtfulness with which we have been able to grow Iterable’s team and culture. Diversity has always remained at the forefront of our efforts. Diverse teams are stronger, more agile, more creative and more effective teams when it comes to solving complex problems. Together, as an Iterable community, we’ve instituted policies like flexible work and geoneutral pay that create an equitable and inclusive culture at work, ensuring our workforce is supported, and empowered to accomplish their best work. ” – Bela Stepanova, VP of Product at Iterable
At the age of 12 in her small hometown in Russia, Bela started coding. While at the time she didn’t have access to the internet, she spent evenings reverse engineering code from programming books. Coding allowed her to make her passion for abstract mathematics more tangible, and kickstarted her now 15-plus-year career of combining design and data science to build products used by millions of people.
At Iterable, Bela leads a team of product and product operations managers, designers, partner managers, and technical writers. Within her first few months at Iterable, she not only built and scaled the Product team, but also exponentially accelerated product delivery and created a vision for the Iterable product that facilitated our Series E funding round. Her human-centric approach to design, combined with a cross-functional and collaborative leadership style, has accelerated Iterable’s rapid growth.
The Judging Process
The panel of judges chosen to select this year’s Stevie Award winners included over 70 professionals worldwide. We’re proud to share some of the commentary shared by the anonymous judging panel, about Bela:
“Bela has a remarkable journey in her technology career starting at the age of 12 with limited access to resources. She is an inspiration to young women and girls considering a career in IT. Her human-centric approach to technology has positively impacted the growth of Iterable and she is setting the tone for the future of marketing with her approach to product development.”
“Great efforts by Bela at Iterable combining design and data science to build products used by millions of people today”
“Diversity rates are very hard to achieve, especially in a hyper competitive and dynamic hiring market. Bela’s team is ~55% female, including women at executive levels. Achieving this feat along with the focus on increasing valuation, velocity, scaling the team etc. is a phenomenal achievement.”
Equity and Empathy Fuels Innovation
It’s no secret that the tech industry has a diversity issue. But this isn’t just a superficial problem—it has implications for justice and fairness and can result in flaws in product, use, and deliverability.
Bela has long been a proponent of the connection between diversity and innovation, leading the charge for institutional change through mentorship and leadership.
Recently, Bela was featured in We are Tech Women’s “Inspirational Women” series where she shared her personal and professional development timeline as well as advice to support women in technology covering topics like intellectual fulfillment, career challenges, and overcoming industry bias.
Bela is passionate about combining design and data science to make modern communications between brands and consumers more empathetic. Recent product updates, like SMS link shortening and tracking, Brand Affinity, and Aurora UX, reflect this passion, and give marketers the tools they need to connect and build long lasting relationships with customers, effectively and efficiently.
Bela continues to be a leader in pushing others to embrace humanity in marketing and ultimately make a difference in the world with their work. We’re incredibly proud to have her on the team!
Our momentum grows daily and there has never been a more exciting time to join the Product team! Explore open roles on our careers page!
