Women in AdTech Speak Up: Their Words, Their Industry

Women in adtech have shaped some of the most important conversations in advertising technology, and throughout March, we asked some of the most dynamic women in our customer community one simple question: what does it really mean to be a woman in adtech? What came back was not simple at all.

At Swaarm, we believe that celebrating women’s voices in adtech is not something that should happen once a year and then fade into the background. It is a commitment that should live in the conversations we have, the partnerships we build, and the communities we nurture every day. That is why, across the month of March, in the spirit of International Women’s Day 2026 and its Give to Gain theme, we reached out to a series of remarkable women across our customer network and asked them to share their experiences, their challenges, and their advice for the next generation entering the fast moving world of advertising technology.

What followed was something more than a content series. It became a conversation, candid, generous, and deeply human, about what it truly means to navigate an industry as complex as adtech, especially for women in adtech while also navigating the specific, sometimes invisible, weight of being a woman within it. Four voices. Four stories. One undeniable truth: the women shaping this industry are doing so with extraordinary intention.

Walking Into Rooms Alone

Mariana V., Operations Director at Notch, opened the series with a reflection that many women in adtech will recognize immediately. For many women in adtech, this experience is not the exception, but the starting point.

“Being a woman in Adtech has often meant walking into rooms where you’re the only one who looks like you, especially early on.”

The challenge Mariana describes is not just about numbers or representation statistics, it is about the psychological reality of isolation, and the very particular difficulty of growing professionally without role models who reflect your own experience. The absence of visible women in leadership does not just slow career progression. It narrows the imagination of what is possible.

Yet Mariana’s story is ultimately one of agency. She did not wait for the industry to build those role models for her. She built her own support system, sharpened her instincts, and learned to speak before she felt completely ready. Her advice to young women entering adtech is a quiet kind of radical: do not wait for permission. Trust that curiosity, resilience, and speed of learning matter far more in this industry than performing a version of perfection that was never designed with you in mind.

Credibility as Currency

For Valentina Tranquilli, COO and Partner at Cookies Digital, the path through adtech’s male dominated spaces, especially for women in adtech, was paved with preparation and proof.

“Working in adtech as a woman meant learning early how to speak with confidence in highly technical and male dominated environments.”

Making her voice heard in strategic decisions was not always easy. But Valentina’s approach was methodical: focus on preparation, anchor everything in measurable results, and invest in long term partnerships built on trust. What she articulates so precisely is a principle that many women in business come to understand through experience: credibility, once earned, becomes the most durable asset you can own. It opens doors not just for you, but, crucially, for the women who come after.

There is something quietly powerful in that framing. Valentina is not just talking about her own career. She is talking about legacy, about what it means to succeed in a way that changes the environment for others.

Competence Plus Consistency

Chiara D’Ambra, COO at WinkleLab, brought both heat and heart to her contribution, describing adtech as a space that is simultaneously exhilarating and demanding.

“Being a woman in adtech means learning to own your voice in an industry where trends change fast and new innovations are constantly being developed.”

Chiara speaks to one of the more subtle, but no less real, challenges women in adtech face in advertising technology: being underestimated before they have had a chance to speak. The assumption of incompetence is something many women encounter long before they have the opportunity to demonstrate otherwise. Her response? Competence plus consistency builds undeniable presence. It is not a passive formula. It requires showing up, again and again, until the presence you have built becomes impossible to overlook.

But her message for this Women’s Day goes beyond career strategy. It carries genuine gratitude, for the women who fought before her, for the milestones they made possible, for every mother, leader, teacher, and sister who moved the needle even slightly. That intergenerational acknowledgment matters. Progress does not emerge from nowhere. It is handed forward.

Her advice to young women entering this space is worth reading twice: focus on your dreams, plan for them daily, ask questions without fear, and go your own way. The industry needs your perspective and your ambition just as much as your technical skill.

Having It All – on Your Own Terms

Perhaps the most striking contribution came from Tanya Makarei, CEO and Co Founder at Iris, who opened with a question she says she hears constantly.

“How are you doing all that?”

In a few words, that question contains multitudes. Over more than a decade, Tanya has built a successful career in adtech while raising her child as a single parent, maintaining an active sports life, cultivating meaningful relationships, travelling, learning, and staying close to family and friends. The sheer breadth of it is enough to make you pause. For women in adtech, balancing ambition and life at this scale often comes with unique expectations.

But Tanya does not frame any of this as extraordinary. She frames it as intentional. Her recipe, stubbornness, a clear intention to have it all, and disciplined time management, is deceptively simple. What it takes to execute is anything but. In a fast, noisy industry where attention is constantly under siege, Tanya has built her life around focus. The biggest challenge, she insists, is not talent. It is the ability to manage your attention as the finite, precious resource it is.

To young women entering adtech, her message is direct and unequivocal: nothing is impossible. Stay curious, plan your time wisely, keep learning, be consistent. Your way will find you.

Why We Did This and Why It Matters

These four women, an Operations Director, a COO and Partner, a Chief Operating Officer, and a CEO, represent different companies, different paths, and different chapters of a career in advertising technology. Yet across their contributions, certain themes emerge with striking clarity.

They all learned to speak before they felt ready. They all faced moments of being underestimated or unheard. They all built their credibility deliberately, through results and relationships rather than waiting for it to be conferred. And they all chose to use their experience not just to advance their own careers, but to change something for the colleagues who work alongside them, for the younger women who are just beginning, and for an industry that still has meaningful work to do on inclusion and representation.

This series existed because we believe that stories are infrastructure. They build the architecture of what is possible. When a young woman entering adtech reads Mariana’s words about trusting her instincts, or Tanya’s quiet confidence that having it all is not a fantasy, or Valentina’s reminder that credibility becomes your strongest asset, something shifts. The boundary between possible and achievable gets a little smaller.

The Give to Gain theme of International Women’s Day 2026 asks all of us, companies, communities, and individuals, to consider what generosity looks like in practice. For us at Swaarm, it looked like this: creating space for our customers to speak, amplifying their voices, and trusting that what they had to say was worth more than a polished PR statement. It was. It is.

We are proud to have shared their words. We are grateful they shared them with us. And we look forward to continuing this conversation about women in adtech, not just in March, but every month of the year, as more women in adtech shape the future of the industry.