Suzanne Dvorak

Chief executive and founder, Marie Stopes International Australia in Australia

The chief executive of a network of sexual health clinics might not be the first person to spring to mind when putting together a list of the nation’s best businesswomen. And in fact, Telstra Businesswoman of the Year 2005, Suzanne Dvorak, CEO of Marie Stopes International Australia (MSIA) in Australia, was the first to admit surprise (and delight) at receiving the national award.

“Winning the award was a truly inspirational moment for a number of reasons. I felt that it acknowledged the importance of women having access to sexual and reproductive health advice and services, and it is great recognition of the hard work my team and I have put into building the business over the past three years,” Dvorak says.

Sex, contraception and abortion are controversial topics in every society, and MSIA provides information, advice and treatment of a range of sexual and reproductive issues, including abortion, to more than four million people across 37 countries. “This is not always a popular career choice. It can make you a bit of a pariah on occasion, because of the issue of abortion,” Dvorak says. Until contraception is 100 percent effective, that issue is not going to go away in a hurry either, she adds.

MSIA is one of the world’s biggest health agencies named after Dr Marie Stopes, founder of England’s first family planning clinic. “She caused a furore n 1921 when she declared that sex shouldn’t just be about reproduction, nor should it only be about the satisfaction of one’s husband: that women also had the right to enjoy sex. Clearly a woman ahead of her time.”

When the organisation decided to look at the viability of establishing profit-making clinics in Australia in 2001, to support their work in developing countries, Dvorak took on the position of business development manager.

She established seven clinics across Australia and developed them as branded, profit-making ventures. As MSIA is a not for profit organisation, the model the Australian division uses is that of a social business, aiming for social dividends rather than just financial ones.

“For example if we donate to a country that has very high maternal and infant mortality, and set up a programme to address that issue; if maternal and infant mortality decreases, we have been successful. That is the social dividend.” The businesses are measured against a dual bottom line: a profitable business must also encompass the organisation’s humanitarian ideals. In the four years since Dvorak established the network in Australia, the clinics have treated more than 11,000 women and their families. The majority of the profits are re-invested back into Australian programmes, and 75 percent of the women who attend the clinics are subsidized clients.

Dvorak came to MSIA after seven years with the United Nations, running projects in Thailand and Vietnam. She was put in charge of repatriating communications technology out of Cambodia, through Thailand to the next UN projects – in this case Mozambique and Georgia, an interesting exercise in global logistics.

Negotiating with customs was easy compared with navigating the cultural divide, she admits. “I had to unlearn all my experience as a tourist and relearn what it meant to be living in a country and respecting a country’s customs.”

Dvorak did not find her gender to be a disadvantage when doing business in Asia. “Most of the women I worked with in Asia were truly successful on every level; they were good at business, they were heads of the family, and most of them were mothers as well. They seemed to be able to balance that all together gracefully.” Since she recently became a mother for the first time, many of these women are now Dvorak’s role models.

Although her career path has been diverse, the thread throughout has been humanitarian. “When you think about what Marie Stopes said way back in the 1920s, I believe we still have people trying to limit our access to reproductive health, and I get very passionate about that. My role is to make sure we continue to offer affordable choices to women, and that they are treated with dignity, and without judgement.”