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They came from all over Australia, from all manner of employment - lobster farmers and mine operators to health-care workers and scientists, sales executives and strategists. But the finalists in the 2005 Telstra Business Women's Awards had one thing in common: their outstanding contribution to Australian business and their communities.

Marie Stopes International CEO, Ms Suzanne Dvorak is the 2005 National Winner of the Hudson Community and Government Award.

Suzanne Dvorak first witnessed "lives without infrastructure" when she worked for a United Nations mission in Cambodia. She realised her most effective means of helping was to combine her passion for social development with her talent for running a business. Dvorak helped develop a business plan and set up in her spare room in 2002. Within 18 months Marie Stopes International had formed an IT division, a call centre, a marketing and communications department and mved to more spacious headquarters in Melbourne. In Australia the organisation runs as a profit-making concern that provides reproductive health care. Its profits are then distributed through non-government organisations to 37 developing nations to fund sexual health services, with the aim of providing safe, affordable contraception to all. The CEO takes no prisoners when it comes to generating awareness - her team recently organised for a vasectomy to be performed live on a late night TV talk show.