2023 State Winners - ACT

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Accelerating Women Award. 

Audio – presenter: I'm really proud to announce the winner is Wildly Strong.

Footage: Recipient weaves her way through the tables of well-dressed people and up onto the stage to receive her award.

Audio from recipient: Thank you so much. Very shocked, though Wildly Strong aims to improve the health and confidence of women through mindset, movement and nutrition. It was driven by my own preoccupation with chronic dieting and body image, which began in my teens.

I've had a lot of emotional issues and I bought into that whole diet culture idea that being smaller would actually make me happier and more successful. And as this belief is obviously incorrect, it is very common amongst women and very well documented.

So often, women hold back from job opportunities and things like relationships, travel and other such things because they are worried about how they look. So I tried every diet under the sun and I've helped women get professional bodybuilder status internationally, which means they're like the most perfect you could possibly look. But I noticed after a while that they actually were not very happy. So as much to make them look perfect, they were not - it was not helping them feel any better about themselves.

Noticing that, I decided to turn my attention to creating a solution, which was to help women eat more and nourish their metabolisms and stop dieting and to build strength through strength and resilience, through weight training. And I also learned very early on that what works for men does not work for women. In a male-dominated industry, identifying that and then catering everything to women actually accelerated the results that my clients got.

So, on the outside, it looks a little bit like I probably help women lose weight. But what I actually do is help women build unshakeable strength and confidence from the inside out. Help women feel safe in their bodies, transform their mindsets and nourish themselves. I do this in person and online by my Wildly Strong Women's Health Academy

So, I really believe that once women move beyond this body obstacle of thinking that they have to shrink themselves and they stop dieting, they can finally open up to their life and live it to its best possibilities.

And I see this time and time again, and that's why I'm so passionate about what I do.

So, yeah, thank you so much.

Footage: The audience applauds and cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Building Communities Award. 

Audio – presenter: The 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Australian Capital Territory Building Communities Award winner is Region Group.

Footage: Recipients weave their way through the tables of well-dressed people and up onto the stage to receive their award.

Audio - recipient: Thank you so much. Region Group, known to many of you as Riot Act, is deeply honoured to receive this award. Thank you, Telstra. Thank you to everyone in the business community who's involved in making these awards possible here in Canberra and across Australia.

At Region, we know that business is the engine that drives the community and without community business isn't possible. At Region we've recognised from the very beginning of our journey that we will get nowhere unless we are trustworthy citizens. And we've also recognised that the Canberra business world cares deeply about this place and we say this over and over again.

Businesses who say to us, ‘I want to promote what we do’, sure. But an integral part of that is supporting Hands Across Canberra, the RSPCA, Project Independence, Karinya House, Vinnies, Ronald McDonald House, or maybe the smaller matters, the people who say to us, ‘Look, can you just give a shout out to someone who deserves help or recognition because we're all behind them’.

We see ourselves at Region as a net across the community. We see ourselves touching the community at every point with news and stories and ideas. And we are meeting nearly 700,000 unique readers every month across our platforms. We're funded from here. We are owned here. We are part of this place. And so we believe that we owe it a duty of care and at Region we take that very seriously indeed. We are all so proud of the supportive and very strong culture.

Region's built within the organisation and many of the people who've been with us longest are with us tonight at our table. The culture we build is based on flexibility, respect and common decency. We've built a good, good place to work with so much happiness and so much laughter.

So to Michael McGuigan and Tim White you did something remarkable when you saw the potential for this media organisation and you decided to ground it in trust and in service to our community.

Thank you to all of our team who worked so hard to bring that vision of a deeply connected community to life every day. From our advisory board chair, Glenys Beauchamp, right down to our canine HR team, Mr Smiggle and his associate Toby, at Region.

We feel like a family. And all of you here in this room are our neighbours. So thank you for this honour. And, like good neighbours do, drop in one day when your next passing, we'll put the kettle on, we'll have a yarn and we might do some good together.

Thank you.

Footage: The audience applauds and cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Championing Health Award. 

Audio – presenter: So, the 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Australian Capital Territory Championing Health Award winner is - need to get it open - National Nursing Agency.

Footage: Recipients weave their way through the tables of well-dressed people and up onto the stage to receive their award.

Audio - recipient: I think I'm going to do everything Barb told us not to do in our presentations tonight. Oh, if any of you did the masterclass in relation to the speechwriting. 

So, thank you. Thank you, Telstra, for putting on the awards, and I know none of them are here tonight, but to my most amazing team who have supported every single one of you in some facet over the last 12 months.

Actually, since the end of 2019 when we had the bushfires. Since that time we had a lot of displaced residents from the south coast in residential aged care.

We were working constantly and ongoing for that period of time. We went from our highest highs that year, our biggest shifts ever, our team putting in extra effort to help with all those people that had relocated and obviously through the ACT region, to our lowest low in COVID that year as well. Then nobody wanted agency staff. We might bring COVID to them. So we fell, we lost 70 per cent of our team in that year in the first lockdown, which was huge for us because we had spent the last five years building it and having this amazing team. I think I sat on the couch and drank Rosé every day from 10 am for the first lockdown, being completely real because that's me.

But from that period of time, I thought we had to do things differently. So, we did. And we turned things around. We rallied our troops, worked out what we could do differently. And we did do it differently! I think that's a credit to myself and Matt and our amazing team of registered nurses, enrolled nurses and personal carers who have literally worn plastic PPE. Now, I did not win a finalist in the sustainability award. We had no choice. Plastic PPE has saved so many lives and my guys had to make some of the toughest phone calls that they've ever had to make in their life to residents and patients at certain health care facilities through to some of the best calls as well.

So, my team are amazing. Our crew is huge. Our culture is significant.

I have the best team. I love every single one of them. And for me, I know they think the nearest thing in leadership is your team, not your family, but my team and my family. I've seen some of them have children and their children now have children. We've been in operation for over 25 years here in Canberra. 

It's a family business for us as well. So we love what we do. We're pretty passionate about it and quality of care is what we do. Quantity is not. So any time you're in ICU or having a vaccination or visiting a loved one in an aged care facility, it's likely that my team are there and supporting your family members as well as mine.

So, thank you. Thank you all. This has been an amazing journey. I cannot thank Telstra enough. After the first couple of stages I think I was like, ‘Oh my God, I need this, I need to do this’. And then everyone's like, ‘Slow down’. I was like, ‘No’. The judges were absolutely amazing. They gave me some fantastic ideas through the period. So, thank you. It's been huge. Thank you.

Footage: The audience applauds and cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Embracing Innovation Award. 

Audio – presenter: So, the 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Australian Capital Territory Embracing Innovation Award winner is The Mullion Group.

Footage: Recipient weaves their way through the tables of well-dressed people and up onto the stage to receive their award.

Audio - recipient: I'm really shocked. Sorry. Such amazing, amazing companies here and really, really privileged to be part of the group that is here and it's a particular honour for me to accept this award on behalf of The Mullion Group and thank Telstra for acknowledging the work that our team has done over the past decade.

And as I said, it's really actually quite humbling to be part of the finalists in this area. The Mullion Group started with a pretty familiar story for start-ups. It started in a garage in Farrer in 2014 with a group of friends with an ambition to drive change in climate action in the land sector – so on farms and in forests.

When we started, we were really helping countries develop their greenhouse gas inventories across these sectors and to identify where carbon emissions are occurring, where their removal is occurring and really to kind of help them understand their carbon stories.

What we quickly realised is that the problems that these countries were facing were the same problems that farmers, landholders and corporates were facing here in Australia as well as abroad, which is that we're in a really data rich environment, but we're missing information. We need actionable information so we can make our carbon story better. And that led us to our software solution, FLINTpro, which is a system to provide, you know, clear information on carbon emissions and removals in farms and in forests, for any parcel anywhere in the world, and to understand why they're occurring.

What a ride it's been. Since we started nine years ago, you know, the climate discussions have changed a lot. Obviously, we're subject to a lot of political changes with changes in corporates and directions, but it's a really, really exciting time to be in this space.

We've seen corporates taking climate leadership. Telstra is one of those organisations with net zero commitments and it's such a privilege to work with these companies on those journeys and to be able to... I'm sorry, lost myself. Well, I wanted to say is that we've allowed us to support our company to grow from where we were from four people in a garage to now 30 people in four offices around the world. We're really, really proud to help these organisations to understand their carbon story and really more importantly how to change that going forward.

So once again, sorry for my nerves, very nervous, but thank you again. And that’s it.

Footage: The audience applauds and cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Indigenous Excellence Award. 

Audio – presenter: The 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Australian Capital Territory Indigenous Excellence Award winner is Evolve FM.

Footage: Recipient weaves their way through the tables of well-dressed people and up onto the stage to receive their award.

Audio - recipient: I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we celebrate tonight, the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri people and thank the other finalists in our category, along with Telstra, who run a very rigorous process for these awards, which makes the receipt of this award that much sweeter for us and also for all the finalists here tonight.

I'd like to say congratulations to Troy Rugless, proud Wiradjuri and Mua Island man who joins us tonight. He's the founder of Evolve FM and the majority owner.

As the leader of this business for the last five and a half years, I also want to say thank you to my family, to one man who joins me tonight, who always supports me in what I do, my husband and to one man who is not my husband, who I borrow from his wife, who backs me up in this in this business as our Chief Operating Officer.

And without both of those men, I could not do what I do in leading an incredible team of people who I'm very, very proud to work alongside. Evolve FM channels Federal government spend from 23 different federal government clients, predominantly based in Canberra, but with national property portfolios.

And over the last five years, Evolve FM has managed to channel $60 million of spend through 51% of Indigenous businesses multiplying - we know in Indigenous communities by the sleeping giant effect of $4.41 per dollar – equating to a $250 million spent in the Indigenous economy.

We're incredibly proud of those achievements. To quote the very great Barack Obama and I quote, ‘Now focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself, for it's only when you hitch your wagon into something greater than yourself, then you can realize your full true potential.’

And I raise that quote with you tonight because I think we all, each of us here tonight, have a responsibility and an opportunity to be a part of something greater than ourselves - it is a pivotal moment in Australian history with the upcoming referendum - to vote yes to Voice, an Indigenous Voice in Parliament. As a business supporting Indigenous business and Indigenous Australians and someone who focuses on, you know, a very strong social ambition to see the improvement and the empowerment and the self-determination of Indigenous Australians in Australia, I think it would be remiss of me not to encourage you to do that tonight. 

So, this award means a lot to us. Thank you so much.

Footage: The audience applauds and cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Outstanding Growth Award. 

Audio – presenter: So, the 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Australian Capital Territory Outstanding Growth Award winner is GoBoat Australia. 

Footage: Recipient weaves their way through the tables of well-dressed people and up onto the stage to receive their award.

Audio from recipient: Thank you, everyone. And I just want to say congratulations to every finalist in the room tonight, winner or not, because the process for applying for these awards is gruelling. There are so many stages and so much paperwork. So to get here tonight, I feel proud even before winning anything. So, I mean, I'm a relatively new Canberran, and I moved here in about 2015. And when I told my friends back in Sydney that I was starting a business doing electric boats on Lake Burley Griffin, they thought I'd gone crazy with the cold.

So I just I didn't know what was going on. And as someone who grew up with no experience with boats myself, with no access to boats, no friends that had boats or anything like that, I experienced this magical, you know, electric boating thing in Europe. And I thought, I need to bring this to Canberra. It just has this sort of amazing relaxing feeling. And as Kamal was talking about this sort of connection and disconnection, so you get on this boat, you're away from the shore, you're away from the worries of work and all that sort of thing and you connect with the people that you're with on the boat. And it's almost like putting your phone in a safe, although you can take it out and take a selfie for Instagram. That works well for us. But you can disconnect from the world and connect with other people. And I thought I sort of took that from what Kamal was talking about last night, oh sorry, tonight.

But it's funny, listening to you, listening to you talk about our pitch in the application that since I spoke to the judges, we had 54 boats and four locations and now we have 70 plus and we're in six locations. 

So we've already grown a bit more since then. Thank you. We bootstrapped four boats here and brought them in from Europe in 2017. We started with one city here in Canberra with four boats. We're now in six cities with 70 plus boats and 70 plus employees. Two of them are here tonight. Thanks for coming, Amy and Liam. You guys do an amazing job. Thank you.

I wish I could bring the whole team, but there's like 70 of them, so that would have probably made us bankrupt tonight if I tried to bring all of them. But we're really proud of democratising the water and making it really easy.

As a kid who grew up with no idea of what a boat did or anyone who had one close by, we're really proud that we can bring that experience to everybody, you know, boat licence or not. And everyone gets to experience that joy and that disconnection or connection, whatever, whatever floats their boat. But we've got bigger plans for this year.

We're really excited about those. So maybe by the nationals we'll have some more stuff to announce. But thank you very much, everyone and hopefully we'll see you out on the water.

Footage: The audience applauds and cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Promoting Sustainability Award. 

Audio - presenter: The 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Australian Capital Territory Promoting Sustainability Award winner is Electromotiv.

Footage: Recipient weaves their way through the tables of well-dressed people and up onto the stage to receive their award.

Audio - recipient: Thank you so much. And the good news straight away is it’s the last one and it's a very short one, too. So good evening and thank you very much for recognising Electromotiv and the team and very excited to be in the category of sustainability.

So Electromotiv’s mission is to bring sexy back in the bus industry and that's obviously, as you all know stands for S, sustainability, E for economics and X the X Factor. And I'll come back to that.

So how do we do that? We'll simply by helping bus operators transition their depot and their fleet from old-fashioned diesel to electronic.

And this covers helping them select the right buses with batteries, select the right charger technology, optimising their energy use and exploring opportunities for solar or for onsite battery. And most importantly, as well, helping them with their finance, because our venerable banks are yet to discover sustainability is something that can be invested in.

So we've got some specialised finance partners that we work with. Now the outcomes I promised, sexy back in sustainability, is probably self-explanatory. Carbon is one aspect, but the other one is as well, if you've ever stood next to or cycled next to a diesel bus, you would know what it feels like to be in the crisp, freshly brewed cloud that diesel buses unfortunately leave behind.

The E for economy is also a very interesting one because if you look at current diesel prices, we're up to $2.10 or so last I looked at the bowser and compare that with $0.26 for a kilowatt. On average, you're looking at about a third of the cost to run an electric bus compared to a diesel bus. And that is not even considering the maintenance costs that you do not have with an electric bus. Those of you with electric vehicles, and lots of you, I'm sure know that story. So it's a win all around economically for the operators as well as for Australia. 

And then lastly, the X Factor. I know that you were wondering about that. We work with a bus operator in New Zealand and one of their troubles was that they really struggled getting young people into the bus driving profession. Who would have that? And they said, ‘Guess what? When we started the transition to electric buses and we advertised bus drivers wanted for electric buses, it tripled the number of people applying for jobs.’ So, there's the X Factor. 

And thank you very much that we got the X Factor tonight. I'm very proud and I want to thank my team. I want to thank the Telstra team and obviously our clients as well that we can be here. So have a great night. Thanks for holding out. You're still sitting here, so have a great night and enjoy the wine after this.

Footage: The audience applauds and cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: Telstra jingle plays.