The Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® Technology & Standards Awards recognize individuals for their commitment to excellence as shown by their participation in CTA’s Technology & Standards program.
Congratulations to this year’s recipients of the:
Toni has held numerous leadership roles within Health, Fitness and Wellness Committee (R11), currently serving as the R11 Chair. She has helped support the growth of R11 from its early days, specifically working on our first published health standard on step counting. Since then, she has contributed to many standards developed across a variety of WGs. Recently, as R11 Chair, Toni has helped grow the program adding additional WGs and projects.
Toni Connelly is the Owner of Platform and Data Sources at Validic, Inc. Validic powers a connectivity and data platform that connects hundreds of the best activity and biometric data sources with health and wellness solutions. Validic is a leading provider of health data solutions for remote care and virtual engagement and has proudly received such industry awards as MedTech Breakthrough’s 2023 Best Overall Connected Healthcare Solution, Avia Marketplace’s 2023 Top 50 Remote Patient Monitoring Solution provider, and Modern Healthcare’s 2023 Best Places to Work in Healthcare award.
Connelly chairs the Consumer Technology Association’s Health, Fitness and Wellness Committee. The Health, Fitness and Wellness Committee creates standards and guidelines to improve the effectiveness of consumer health technologies, with the goal of improving health outcomes and lowering overall healthcare costs.
Debbie has actively been involved in CTA standards for over 10 years, supporting the broad energy efficiency portfolio. Her proactive approach and technical acumen has led to significant advancement of multiple CTA standards. Recently, she spearheaded the development of CTA-2049-B, a standard that outlines procedures for measuring the energy consumption of Small Network Equipment in the Ready State. Her leadership in this development is a testament to her skills and dedication to enhancing industry standards. Her consistent readiness to step up and lead by example not only demonstrates her commitment to the tasks at hand but also highlights her as a leader who can inspire and guide others.
Debbie Fitzgerald is a Distinguished Technologist and Director of Sustainability at CableLabs/Kyrio. As part of this role, she leads the technical efforts of the award-winning energy efficiency voluntary agreements for small network equipment and set-top boxes in the United States and Canada. Over her 17 years with the company, Debbie has led efforts in interactive video, advanced advertising, accessibility, immersive media experiences, IoT, and sustainability. She has worked with CTA in many of these efforts, most recently with R4 and R7 for the energy measurement test methods. Debbie spent her first eight years in the cable industry at Divicom and Harmonic before joining CableLabs. Debbie holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. She has been recognized as one of the Cablefax Most Powerful Women, as an Energy and Environmental Leader 100 Honoree, and a WICT Rocky Mountain Woman in Technology.
Eric has been a leader across the CTA Cybersecurity and Privacy Management work for many years. He currently serves as Chair of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Management Committee (R14) and serves as the co-chair of multiple working groups. Included in his role, he is responsible for ANSI/CTA-2088-A, Baseline Cybersecurity Standard for Devices and Device Systems, where he was a major contributor to that important document. Currently, he serves as co-chair of WG 5 Cybersecurity for ML-Based Systems which is a critical topic in industry that needs addressing. He has an extensive knowledge of cybersecurity and cutting-edge developments in the field has helped tremendously in the work done in multiple work groups and is a great boon to R14.
Eric is Akamai's Director of Platform Security Engineering, heading a global department of engineers and architects who build key platform features that Akamai uses to itself, Linode, and its customers. This includes inter key management and access management systems, as well as participating in the continued development of open source cryptography libraries.
Eric started building web-based applications in the mid '90s and has since worked deeper in the stack, down to hypervisors. He came to Akamai through the acquisition of a mobile startup in 2010 and has held roles in engineering management and information security. He currently focuses on Information Security standards at CTA. If you visit Florida, he just might take you sailing or windsurfing on the Indian River Lagoon.
Chris has been a significant contributor and leader in WAVE over the past year. He has nearly single-handedly written both the Common Access Token spec and the Fast and Readable Geohashing Spec, but at the same time building and finding consensus for this work among WG members. He also leads the Streaming Media group and is the main contributor to their Request Tracing spec. Chris is insightful, extremely technically competent and at the same time a pleasure to work with. Chris is a stellar example of a significant and critical contributor for his work ethic and technical contributions.
Chris Lemmons is a Senior Software Engineer and Internet Standards Enthusiast enjoying his career at Comcast, where he serves as a technical leader in the Content Delivery and Security domains. Since 2017, Chris has been at the forefront of designing and implementing state-of-the-art CDN technologies, consistently prioritizing reliability and performance. His leadership extends across every level of standardization, from crafting corporate standards tailored to unique business needs to spearheading the development of Internet standards that drive industry-wide innovation.
Chris serves in a variety of roles in the standards community: he is the chair of the Content Delivery Networks Interconnection Working Group at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the chair of the Streaming Media Tracing Working Group at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), and an author of the Common Access Token for the CTA. Additionally, he is an editor and contributor to numerous documents within the IETF, CTA, and Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA).
Josh has been overseeing the development of the standard describing the US Cyber Trust Mark label (ANSI/CTA-2120) in his role as chair of R14 WG7. This work is both high-profile and time-critical. Josh has been able to bring his experience and expertise to provide both technical information and thought leadership to the group. He has structured the work at a high level, contributed significant text to the draft standard, kept the working group focused on priority items and assigned offline work items to progress work in between meetings. His skillful guidance of the group has made a daunting task possible, and the standard they have helped create will form the backbone of the eventual US national cybersecurity labeling program for consumer connected devices.
Josh Macy is the Manager of Regulatory and Agency Approvals for Robert Bosch Tool Corporation located in Mount Prospect, IL. He and his team scout, analyze, and synthesize guidance to product teams for US and Canadian market access for power tools, laser products, and tool accessories of industry-leading brands, including Bosch, Dremel, CST Berger, Rotozip, and Vermont American.
Supporting a broadening product portfolio Josh works with several trade associations including the Rechargeable Battery Association (PRBA), Consumer Technology Association (CTA: EPC, R14), and the Power Tool institute (PTI) on related advocacy topics.
Prior to joining the Bosch Power Tool Division in 2019, he held technical and management roles in the Bosch mobility sector areas of: manufacturing, quality, and product design. Josh holds a BSME from the University of Michigan and is pursuing a Master of Science in Law from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
For their leadership in the development of CTA-2113, Best Practices and Recommendations for Telehealth Solutions. This standard identifies a best practice framework for integrating telehealth solutions into the healthcare framework including the use cases of acute care, post-acute care, chronic care, and telehealth visits.
James Mault, MD, FACS, is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BioIntelliSense, a Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform company, delivering breakthrough medical-grade biosensor technology with unique clinical intelligence for scalable remote patient monitoring. Prior to BioIntelliSense, Dr. Mault served as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Qualcomm Life for over five years, where his leadership responsibilities included Strategic Planning and Business Development, Mergers and Acquisitions, New Product Innovation, Clinical Program and Regulatory Oversight, Health Policy and Government Affairs, Global Spokesperson and Public Relations. Dr. Mault came to Qualcomm Life through its 2013 acquisition of HealthyCircles, a Care Coordination and Remote Patient Monitoring Platform Company founded and led by Dr. Mault in 2009. Prior to starting HealthyCircles, he was the Medical Director of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft as well as the CEO of Microlife.
Dr. Mault has more than 35 years of experience in senior executive positions in the Health IT and Medical Device industry as well as clinical medicine. He has founded five Health IT and medical device companies, raising over $150 million in working capital and leading these companies to develop novel devices and software technologies, FDA approvals, strategic partnerships with Fortune 500 companies, culminating in M&A or IPO exit transactions. He is the named inventor of over 80 issued and pending patents for a variety of novel health IT and medical device innovations. He has been board-certified in both General Surgery and Cardiothoracic Surgery, having specialized in heart and lung transplantation, thoracic oncology and critical care. He has conducted academic medical research under grant awards from the NIH, American Cancer Society, and others. He is the author of more than 60 scientific articles, chapters and books in the published medical literature. Dr. Mault received his B.S. in Biology and Medical Degree from the University of Michigan and conducted his General Surgery and Cardiothoracic Surgery residency training at Duke University Medical Center.
Dr. Mault provides global thought-leadership on the future of technology and healthcare delivery, serving on numerous Boards and leadership positions, and is a member of the Board of Industry Leaders for the Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) and Chairman Emeritus of the CTA Health & Fitness Technology Board.
Carolyn Walsh is the Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer for BioIntelliSense. In this role, Carolyn is responsible for marketing, commercial performance and partner channel development resulting in sustained growth of the BioIntelliSense business. BioIntelliSense is a continuous health monitoring and clinical intelligence company in the rapid growth phase of its comprehensive medical grade Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform, including the FDA-cleared BioButton® wearable medical device, BioDashboard™ patient monitoring system and BioCloud™ advanced analytics for scalable remote care from in-hospital to home.
Prior to joining BioIntelliSense, Carolyn Walsh served as the Vice President and Head of Sales and Business Development for the Fitbit Health Solutions group providing leading wearable devices, along with enterprise grade software and services, to inspire and deliver continuous health improvement.
Prior to joining Fitbit Health Solutions, Walsh served as the Head of Global Marketing for Qualcomm Life, Inc. Ms. Walsh joined the Qualcomm Life leadership team from HealthyCircles, an enterprise healthcare software-as-a-service platform company, where she led Business Development and Client Services. HealthyCircles was acquired by Qualcomm Life in 2013.
Prior to HealthyCircles, Walsh served as the Global Marketing Director, Franchise Development for Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Care. Walsh was responsible for the digital health strategy, software innovations and formulating growth strategies for emerging markets of India and China. While at Johnson & Johnson, Walsh served in global commercial leadership roles spanning acute, health care professional and consumer engagement channels.
Before transitioning into the health care industry, Walsh was a versatile executive with Coca-Cola with a proven track record of success in sales management, strategic marketing, brand building and channel development in a major U.S. market along with international assignments in Poland and New Zealand.
Walsh holds a Bachelor's of Science degree from Northern Illinois University and MBA from Loyola University of Chicago.
Recognized as Top 50 Women Leaders in Wellness and Fitness in 2023.