From Technology to Innovation: Patient Zero's 2026 WIICTA Finalists

Demelza Green and Irina Kudryavtseva of Patient Zero have been officially named finalists for the 2026 Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) in the Innovation and Technical categories. This recognition by ARN (Foundry) highlights Patient Zero’s leadership in technical stewardship and Australian capability. 

The 2026 WIICTA Event at a Glance 

• Event: Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) 2026 
• Official Announcement: View the Full 2026 Finalists List 
• Gala Date: Tuesday, 28 April 2026 
• Location: Ilumina, Sydney 
• Organiser: ARN (Foundry) 
  

About the WIICTA Awards

The Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) leads Australia in celebrating the female leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs shaping the future of the technology industry. Now in its 15th year, WIICTA continues to highlight the individuals who provide exceptional business value through specialised skills, creative thinking, and technical competence.

Demelza Green: Distributed Voice and the Future of Industry Leadership

WIICTA 2026 Finalist: Innovation 

Demelza’s nomination for Innovation recognises her role in transforming Patient Zero from a traditional services firm into a powerhouse of creative technical delivery. By replacing generic corporate aesthetics with a "retro-apocalyptic" visual identity, she revitalised the brand to reflect a culture focused on the human element within the future of AI. 

This innovation is most visible in her commitment to "Distributed Voice" thought leadership, which prioritises sharing knowledge and lifting the voices of Patient Zero. She has intentionally created a platform for the team to lead the industry conversation through deep-dive articles, collaborative videos, and conference keynotes. By turning marketing into an act of mentorship and public learning, she ensures that Patient Zero doesn't just deliver software; it actively shapes the future of the engineering community. 

Irina Kudryavtseva: Resilience, Agility, and the Engineer’s Mindset

WIICTA 2026 Finalist: Technical 

Nominated in the Technical category, Irina’s story is one of exceptional professional agility. In 2012, Irina made the difficult decision to pause a successful career as a C++ developer to immigrate to Australia and secure her family’s future. For nine years, she stepped away from her professional identity to raise her children in a new country; a sacrifice that, in a field as fast-moving as software engineering, often marks the end of a technical career. 

However, when Irina returned to the workforce in 2021, she demonstrated incredible technical agility, bridging a decade-long gap by rapidly mastering modern web technologies and cloud architecture across React, TypeScript, and Azure. She proved that true technical excellence isn't tied to a specific tool, but to an engineer’s fundamental mindset and problem-solving capability. 

Since joining Patient Zero, Irina has grown into a Technical Leader admired by both her team and her customers. She is known as the "anchor" of mission-critical delivery, possessing the rare ability to master both the complex technical stack and the deep product domain. Irina is never content with code that simply "works"; she is a fierce advocate for automation and the establishment of reusable patterns that simplify complexity. 

Explore Our Technical Stewardship 

• AI & Emerging Tech: Discover how we deliver practical, secure AI solutions beyond the hype. 
• Embedded Software Teams: Learn how our culture of mentorship builds high-performance delivery teams. 
• App Modernisation & Cloud: See our approach to architecting for scale and long-term resilience. 

Demelza Green is the Co-CEO of Patient Zero and 10,000 Spoons. A Women in Digital UX Leader of the Year and ARN Innovation Award winner, she sits at the intersection of human experience and technical reality. She believes that while tools change, the fundamentals of good design and engineering rigour never go away. 

Her goal? To help Australian businesses stop admiring the problem and start building the solution.

Irina is a Technical Lead at Patient Zero with a background in Applied Mathematics and Cybernetics, bringing a high-authority perspective to complex system design.



Irina is a force multiplier for her team; specialising in high-consequence environments where data integrity and system reliability are imperative. She is a fierce advocate for automation and creating the reusable patterns that allow engineering teams to scale with confidence.