Last year, Atlassian’s Zuli Posada took home the Women Leading Tech Awards in the Recruiter category. Since then, she’s been promoted from senior recruiter – team lead to talent acquisition program lead.
Posada’s promotion reflects the changing needs of the tech industry, where talent roles are expanding beyond traditional recruitment, demanding strategic thinking, program leadership and a deep understanding of people and culture.
It’s a shift that the Women Leading Tech Awards is recognising as it continues to evolve alongside the industry it celebrates.
In 2025, the Recruiter category was refined to focus specifically on recruiters and HR professionals attracting, honing and retaining top female talent. The category now recognises women working in the fields of executive search for technology businesses–placing CEOs, CTOs, CIOs and more.
It differs from the People & Culture category, which is focused on the wellbeing of all a company’s employees, not success of executive leadership placements. This category is open (but not limited) to chief people officer, head of people & culture, director of employee experience, HR director, acknowledging the women shaping workplaces from the inside out.
For Posada, her recognition marked more than just an award—it was a catalyst. Alongside her work at Atlassian, she is also a personal coach at Thrive Partners and brings more than a decade of global experience across APAC, AMER, EMEA and South America. Her career spans high-volume end-to-end recruitment, program management, DEI initiatives and career coaching, underpinned by a strong global mindset and metrics-driven approach.
For the 2025 winner, recruitment has never been about simply filling roles. It’s about creating opportunity and opening doors, especially for women in STEM.
That drive was shaped early on in Colombia, during a time of political uncertainty. While working as part of the board on a presidential campaign, Posada played a key role in initiatives designed to elevate women’s voices, bringing people together through events that sparked momentum and change across the country.
Later, during her time at IBM, she began to notice a familiar pattern. Highly capable women were putting themselves forward for technical roles, yet barriers—both systemic and related to self-belief—were limiting their progress. As a recruiter developing programs and workshops to bring more women into technology, it was there that her purpose took shape.
Her advice to women considering a career in tech is simple and powerful: “Believe in yourself. Connect with your passion and follow it—even if that means failing or trying different things along the way. Technology can be a frightening industry for women, but it’s also incredibly rewarding”.
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As the Women Leading Tech Awards continue to spotlight the breadth of leadership shaping Australia’s tech sector, Posada’s journey stands as a reminder that recognition doesn’t just reflect success—it can help fuel what comes next.
Enter B&T’s Women Leading Tech Awards, presented by Atlassian, now!
