Celebrating the achievements of women in business and taking the opportunity to improve home healthcare across Australia are two of the immediate impacts of winning the 2019 Telstra Business Women’s Awards Victorian small business category for Fiona White.

Fiona, APAM, the Director and Founder of home visit physiotherapy business Own Body, and was named the winner of the state award in mid-March and is now in contention for the national award, to be announced on Thursday, 16 May at a gala dinner in Sydney.

‘Winning the award is going to be wonderful for our company, Own Body. It will help us get our message out and enables me to talk about my remarkable team and the wonderful work they do,’ Fiona says. ‘But what I really hope to achieve from this is to be a game-changer in, and contribute to, changes in home healthcare across Australia.

‘I think for anyone who works in home healthcare, it absolutely makes sense that this is the way of the future. When we think about patient-centred, holistic care and understanding and connecting with our clients—you cannot get more patient-centred than meeting someone in their own environment, with their family, with what’s important to them all around them. You get such a sense of who they are.’

Fiona says winning the award affords her the opportunity to improve the knowledge of home healthcare. ‘I want to make home healthcare commonplace and influence key stakeholders to make decisions around this, and making home healthcare normal.’

Acknowledging female leaders in the community by way of the Telstra Women’s Business Women’s Awards, Fiona says, is important as it creates examples of successful women to inspire others. ‘The tagline for the awards this year is “You cannot be what you cannot see” for the reason being that it is important to recognise women in business and leadership, to create positive examples for other woman to aspire to, identify with and show them that this is also within reach.’

‘I’m not extraordinary and I’m not trying to be any better or any more outstanding than anyone else, but I do hope that my story will have some effect in making both female-led businesses and home healthcare normal.’