Melody Hildebrandt (left) and Darcy Antonellis
DEG: The Digital <a href="https://comicvibe.com/los-angeles-auto-show-opens-registration-for-automobility-la-2026-built-on-energy-autonomy-and-entertainment/” title=”LOS ANGELES AUTO SHOW® OPENS REGISTRATION FOR AUTOMOBILITY LA® 2026, BUILT ON ENERGY, AUTONOMY AND ENTERTAINMENT”>Entertainment Group will present Melody Hildebrandt, chief technology officer for Fox Corp., with the 2026 Hedy Lamarr Award for Innovation in Entertainment Technology.
Celebrating a decade since its inception, the Hedy Lamarr Award recognizes female executives in the fields of entertainment and technology who have made a significant contribution to the industry.
Hildebrandt, a technology innovator at Fox for almost 10 years, sets the comprehensive technology strategy for the company. Before becoming CTO, she previously served as the company’s chief information security officer and as the president of its research and development subsidiary Blockchain Creative Labs. In her current role, Hildebrandt leads the development, design, and implementation of emerging technologies across the Fox enterprise, spanning Fox Sports, Fox News, Fox Entertainment, Fox Television Stations, and Tubi Media Group.
“DEG is proud to present the Hedy Lamarr Innovation Award for 2026 to Melody Hildebrandt of Fox Corp. for her industry leading work at the company, including in artificial intelligence and authenticating and monetizing premium content via blockchain technology,” said DEG president and CEO Amy Jo Smith. “From the earliest stages of her technology career, Melody has exhibited a unique talent for identifying the importance andpotential of new technologies and deploying them for a broad range of benefits including security and content monetization.”
At the same time, the Hedy Lamarr Inspiration Award will be presented to Darcy Antonellis, former president technical operations and chief technology officer at Warner Bros., and former CEO of Vubquity, who throughout her career distinguished herself as both a leader and a role model for emerging engineers. At Warner Bros., she led the studio’s digital transformation and investments across its technology and services-based portfolio within production, distribution, and IP protection. At Vubiquity, she leveraged advanced computing and cloud-based technologies to enable faster, more agile, and highly customized content delivery. Before joining Warner Bros., Antonellis held various executive positions at CBS spanning network, sports, and news. These assignments earned three Emmys for technical production and engineering innovation.
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 Sarah Mashiat, an undergraduate at Princeton University majoring in computer science. To encourage and enable the pursuit of opportunities in entertainment technology, Mashiat will receive a financial award to continue her education.
Hanna Le, a cinematography and editing double major at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts is recognized as runner-up for the Achievement Award.
“There is a strong through-line from the pioneering work of Darcy Antonellis, who helped blaze a path for women to the highest levels of technology leadership in Hollywood, to Melody Hildebrandt’s impressive career achievements, and the fantastic potential of Sarah Mashiat, who already demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the way delivery systems influence the impact of entertainment content,” said Smith. “DEG is proud to mark a decade of the Hedy Lamarr Awards by recognizing these three remarkable innovators.”
“Congratulations to all of the 2026 Hedy Lamarr honorees, and congratulations to DEG on the tenth anniversary of these awards” said DEG chair emeritus Jonathan Zepp, Google VP of global partnerships. “DEG has been leading the way for over a decade in formally recognizing the substantial and special impact of female leadership in entertainment technology. Each of the leaders honored annually represents the best of our industry anddemonstrates women raising the bar for technological innovation in digital entertainment.”
Google will host the 10th annual Hedy Lamarr Awards presentation on Nov. 2 at its Playa Vista campus. The awards presentation is held annually near the anniversary of Lamarr’s birth (November 9, 1914).
“What stands out to me about the last decade at FOX isn’t any single technology, it’s that we built a culture that treats experimentation and innovation as the job, not a side project. We didn’t set out to keep pace with change. We set out to build what comes next,” said Hildebrandt. “That’s only possible because of a team that shows up every day to build what moves the business. This award reflects their work as much as mine.”
“I am truly humbled to receive the Hedy Lamarr Award and extend my heartfelt thanks to DEG. I have long admired Hedy’s creative and scientific agility as both an actor and inventor. Her achievements reinforced to me the value of curiosity, inclusion, passion, and resilience,” said Antonellis. “I share this honor with many individuals I was fortunate to collaborate with as we developed technology-based solutions across production and distribution. Today, I am exhilarated by the prospects of innovators who are developing new tools and methods for the industry’s creators to produce and share amazing content.”
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 GM of PBS Kids; Poppy Crum, former chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories; Paulette Pantoja, founder and CEO of Blu Digital Group, Shalini Govil-Pai, VP and GM of TV platforms at Google; Caroline Chan, VP of network and edge group at Intel; and Shobana Radhakrishnan, senior director of engineering for Google TV at Google.
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.
As chief technology officer, Melody Hildebrandt sets the comprehensive technology strategy for Fox Corp. She previously served as the company’s chief information security officer and as the president of its research and development subsidiary, Blockchain Creative Labs. Her current focus is on future planning, including developments in artificial intelligence and authenticating and monetizing premium content via blockchain technology. She also continues to oversee the cyber-security posture of the business and leads technology M&A efforts, identifying areas for investment and growth. Prior to joining Fox, Hildebrandt held the role of global chief information security officer at 21st Century Fox, where she was responsible for the cyber security posture of 21CF businesses.Before 21CF, she was forward deployed engineer at Palantir Technologies, where she helped start its commercial work and led Palantir’s business in cyber security, anti-money laundering, and rogue trading detection. Prior to that, she consulted U.S. and international governments with Booz Allen Hamilton, where she designed military and strategy war games.
Darcy Antonellis currently serves as operating sdvisor, ABS Capital, and serves on the board of directors for Cinemark Holdings Inc., Xperi Holding Corp., and Vionlabs AB. She was recently named chair of the board of Bango plc. Her media technology career spans more than 30 years. At Warner Bros., Antonellis applied operational insight during the critical transition from analog to digital audio and imaging, streamlining the distribution of entertainment content at a pivotal moment of industry change. As digital distribution expanded — and with it, the risk of content piracy — she led a coordinated, industry-wide response. As distribution channels multiplied and formats proliferated, Antonellis continued to lead with foresight as CEO at Vubiquity, while holding various positions at Vubiquity parent Amdocs Inc. Her work helped shift the industry away from fragmented, in-house formatting toward a scalable, service-based distribution model.
The Inspiration Award has been presented only twice 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, and to Wendy Aylsworth of Walden Pond in 2025, for her dedication to sharing her deep knowledge about emerging production and distribution technologies to grow the next generation of entertainment professionals.
Princeton University student Sarah Mashiat is a computer science student and journalist with an enthusiastic interest in the infrastructure of modern media, specifically the systems that determine how stories are gathered, structured, and delivered, and their impact on how the stories themselves are received and interpreted. She is currently interning at Apollo Global Management, following internships at IAC and Thomson Reuters.
“I intend to build AI systems that strengthen the infrastructure of media and entertainment, creating faster, more equitable, and more transparent tools for how information is producedand delivered,” Mashiat wrote in her application essay. “I want to build systems that serve underrepresented communities rather than merely optimize for engagement, and to keep researching the bias baked into the ones that exist today. The algorithms that surface content do not just predict preference; they shape culture. They determine whose stories get told.”
