12 Nov Google TV’s Shobana Radhakrishnan, Walden Pond’s Wendy Aylsworth Receive DEG’s 2025 Hedy Lamarr Awards
Above, l. to r.: Innovation Award recipient Shobana Radhakrishnan, Insspiration Award honoree Wendy Aylsworth, and Emerging Leader Shantelle Subkhanberdina.
UPDATED (November 12, 2025) – DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group on Monday evening presented Shobana Radhakrishnan, Senior Director of Engineering for Google TV at Google, with the 2025 Hedy Lamarr Award for Innovation in Entertainment Technology and Wendy Aylswoth of Walden Pond with the Hedy Lamarr Inspiration Award. In its ninth year, the Hedy Lamarr Award recognizes female executives in the fields of entertainment and technology who have made a significant contribution to the industry. University of Michigan student Shantelle Subkhanberdina was honored with the Hedy Lamarr Award for Emerging Leaders in Entertainment Technology.
The Hedy Lamarr Awards were presented as part of DEG’s Annual Membership Meeting, attended by 150 member executives Monday evening hosted by IMAX at its corporate facility in Playa Vista. Xperi was Platinum Sponsor of the event.
LOS ANGELES (July 10, 2025) – DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group will present Shobana Radhakrishnan, Senior Director of Engineering for Google TV at Google, with the 2025 Hedy Lamarr Award for Innovation in Entertainment Technology. In its ninth year, the Hedy Lamarr Award recognizes female executives in the fields of entertainment and technology who have made a significant contribution to the industry.
Over a career spanning more than two decades, Radhakrishnan has been a technology visionary bringing AI-based innovation to many products. In her most recent role as the head of engineering at Google TV, she launched the first AI-driven innovation for TV OS in the history of Google, ushering in a new era of innovation with Gemini and AI on TV and setting a high standard for personalized recommendations for the entire industry with a multiplatform and multimodal vision. Prior to Google, Radhakrishnan held various technical leadership roles at Roku, Mindflash Technologies, Yahoo and Netflix.
“DEG is proud to present the Hedy Lamarr Innovation Award for 2025 to Shobana Radhakrishnan of Google for her pioneering work with AI to provide consumers a state of the art experience with personalized recommendations in the Google TV OS,” said DEG President & CEO Amy Jo Smith. “In this year of explosive AI innovation, we honor her track record of important, practical and responsible use of the technology.”
At the same time, the Hedy Lamarr Inspiration Award will be presented to Wendy Aylsworth, CEO/CTO of Walden Pond, where she provides entertainment technology consulting and strategic 
board guidance for entities focused on emerging ecosystems and nascent technologies. Her entertainment career spans more than 30 years at Warner Bros. and The Walt Disney Company, with a focus on transitioning older technologies to more efficient digital processes. The Inspiration Award recognizes Aylsworth’s deep commitment to sharing knowledge across the industry to grow the next generation of technology innovations and entertainment professionals.
The Inspiration Award was created in 2023 and is presented only in those years when the judges encounter a candidate who demonstrates the highest level of technological leadership, generosity of talent and commitment to the growth of budding storytellers and technologists.
The 2025 Hedy Lamarr Achievement Award for Emerging Leaders in Entertainment Technology, honoring a female college student whose studies in the fields of entertainment and technology have shown exceptional promise, will be presented to Shantelle Subkhanberdina, an undergraduate at the University of Michigan majoring in Performing Arts Technology with a concentration in Audio Engineering and Computer Science. To encourage and enable initiative-taking students to pursue opportunities in entertainment technology, each student award recipient receives a financial award to continue her education.
“The influence Wendy Aylsworth has exerted on technical standards that facilitate the production and distribution of premium entertainment content is unparalleled, as is her career-long commitment to sharing knowledge across the industry for the benefit of all,” Smith said. “The strides made by Hedy Lamarr, and by Shobana, Wendy, and countless other female innovators, are multiplying opportunities for the next generation of female technologists like Shantelle, whose education we are thrilled to assist as she pursues her passion for combining storytelling with technology. Congratulations to all three of our 2025 honorees.”
“Hedy Lamarr inspired me throughout my career with the brave risk-taking and technical prowess she showed throughout her life. Her success empowered me to travel very diverse paths during my own career — moving across countries, constantly adapting, and overcoming many barriers to hypercharge teams and products in my pursuit of excellence. Most recently, at Google TV, that has meant leveraging AI to delight users across the globe,” said Radhakrishnan. “Hedy Lamarr’s intelligence, creativity and innate ability to make big leaps continue to have a strong influence on my value system, driving innovation and technology forward. I feel very privileged and humbled to be presented the Hedy Lamarr award and am very thankful to DEG for this honor.”
“Hedy Lamarr was an inspiration to me as a young aerospace engineer working on military data link systems that employed frequency hopping concepts based upon her patent. To be honored in her name is profound and humbling,” said Aylsworth. “Throughout my career, I’ve been passionate about technical excellence and inclusion within this wonderful industry that uses storytelling to preserve culture and inspire change. I’m grateful to DEG for recognizing my contributions and am extremely proud to be part of an industry that continues to evolve through innovation, collaboration, and a spirit of discovery.”
The Hedy Lamarr Awards will be presented during an in-person event in Los Angeles this fall, near the anniversary of Lamarr’s birth (November 9, 1914).
Austrian American actor Lamarr was a Hollywood legend who is best known for her roles in film classics including Samson and Delilah, The Strange Woman and Tortilla Flat. She was also a lifelong inventor whose innovative work included pioneering “frequency hopping,” which became the foundation for spread spectrum technology. Conceived by Lamarr and composer George Antheil for radio guidance systems and patented in 1942, this highly secure technology resists interference and dropout, and is used today for a variety of cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applications.
To honor Lamarr, the Innovation Award seeks to recognize and commemorate female industry leaders who have made a similar impact in the field of entertainment technology. Past honorees include Geena Davis, Founder and Chair of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media; Nonny de la Peña, CEO of Emblematic Group; Dean Willow Bay of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; Sara DeWitt, SVP and General Manager of PBS KIDS; Poppy Crum, Former Chief Scientist at Dolby Laboratories; Paulette Pantoja, Founder & CEO of Blu Digital Group, Shalini Govil-Pai, VP and General Manager of TV Platforms at Google, and Caroline Chan, VP of Network and Edge Group at Intel.
To determine the award winners, DEG enlisted industry leaders including members of its Canon Club Advisory Board, which comprises a cross-section of senior executives representing the entertainment, technology, IT, and consumer electronics industries. Among other factors, the judging panel based its decisions on the candidates’ embodiment of the following principles: Innovation, Engagement and Excellence.
About Shobana Radhakrishnan
Shobana Radhakrishnan is Senior Director of Engineering for Google TV at Google, where she leads next-generation TV product and research groups that have innovated using Gemini and AI on TV. She also led the multi-year initiative to bring Google search and recommendation algorithms to Google TV. She was responsible for bringing Android innovation such as virtual remote, fast pairing and GTV Connect to a one billion-user base with the Google TV app. These have all served as important ecosystem elements not just for Google TV but have also served as benchmarks for the connected TV industry.
Driving initiatives that not only directly influenced and impacted business outcomes at scale, but also transformed the industry at large, is in Radhakrishnan’s DNA. At Netflix, she was the overall engineering lead for the launch of streaming’s first original series, House of Cards. In addition to this, she led architecturally complex migrations that helped Netflix expand globally. Following this, she worked on core platforms at Roku where she spearheaded a multi-year migration that was critical to core business success.
Shobana is passionate about diversity in STEM, inclusiveness in products, and has led Diversity and Inclusion initiatives across Roku, Google, Netflix and Yahoo.
About Wendy Aylsworth
Wendy Aylsworth is CEO/CTO of Walden Pond. Her entertainment career has spanned more than 30 years at Warner Bros. and The Walt Disney Company, bringing emerging technologies into production and distribution usage, as seen in digital animation hits such as The Lion King and Space Jam, and the high frame rate Hobbit trilogy. A Lifetime Fellow, former President, and former VP of Engineering (Standards) at SMPTE, Aylsworth has enjoyed contributing to the standards of HDTV, D-Cinema, DVD, Blu-ray Disc and other structural standards that permit the interchange of production data and distribution of entertainment content. She is involved in many organizations to share knowledge and grow the next generation of entertainment professionals; currently acting as Governor of the Television Academy’s new Science & Technology Peer Group and Governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences new Production and Technology Branch, and participating on the Board of the Hollywood Professional Association.
The Inspiration Award has been presented only once before, to Dean Elizabeth Daley of the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2023, in recognition of her long influence on the next generation of content creators.
About Shantelle Subkhanberdina
University of Michigan student Shantelle Subkhanberdina is an aspiring audio engineer and creative professional with experience in recorded production, live sound, music education, and programming. She is currently interning for the second summer at Universal Music Group’s Interscope Records.
Subkhanberdina is passionate about music education, community engagement, and an equitable creative space. She counts among her most rewarding university experiences leading an afterschool music production workshop for middle school students.
“Like Hedy Lamarr, I navigate two worlds: artistry and engineering, creativity and technology. Her ability to bridge these realms inspires me to carve my own path in music technology, where I strive to push boundaries, foster inclusivity, and redefine who gets to lead in this field,” Subkhanberdina said.
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CONTACT: For more information please email Bekah Sturm | bekah@degonline.org
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About DEG
DEG advocates and promotes entertainment platforms, products and distribution channels that support the movie, television, music, consumer electronics and IT industries.
DEG membership is comprised of: 360 Solutions, 3rd I, 3Play Media, A+E Global Media, A24, Amazon MGM Studios, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Web Services, AMC Networks, Angel Studios, Ateliere, BB Media, bitMAX, Blu Digital Group, Cineverse, Circana, Deepdub, Deloitte, Deluxe Digital Studios, DirecTV, Disney+, Dolby Laboratories, Duplitech, ESPN+, Fandango/Vudu, FilmRise, Fox Entertainment Global, FPT Software, Frequency, FutureSource, GfK Entertainment, Giant Worldwide, GlobalLogic, Google, Gracenote, The Great Courses, Hallmark Media, HDMI, IDC-LA, Intel, Iris TV, IYUNO, LG Electronics, Lionsgate Entertainment, Looper Insights, Markit.Place, Mediagenix, Microsoft, Miller Kaplan, Movies Anywhere, NBTV, NexSpec, Omdia, Paramount Global, Paramount Home Entertainment, PBS Distribution, Peacock, Pixelogic, Play Anywhere, Plex, Premiere Digital, PRO-TEK Vaults, Protiviti, Reelgood, Respeecher, Samsung Electronics, Screen Engine/ASI, The Sherlock Company, Shout Studios, Sonopress, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Spherex, Stingray, SymphonyAI, Synamedia, Tubi, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Veritone, Vindicia, Vizio, VSYN+, Vubiquity, Warner Bros. Discovery, Whip Media, Xcinex, XL8, Xperi, and ZOO Digital.