Genevieve Clay-Smith Wins ‘The Australian Women’s Weekly Qantas Women of the Future competition 2015′

The Australian Women’s Weekly Qantas Women of the Future competition is a prestigious award and is now in its third year. The award itself was created with the goal of helping Australia’s young women of the future fulfil their dreams. Competitors need to be young women aged between 18 and 28 with a great business idea, an inspiring charity or a creative venture to fund or innovation to research that will make the lives of Australians richer and more rewarding. Last year, the judges chose Laura O’Reilly for her work providing jobs for young people with disabilities.

This year the judging panel comprised of an esteemed list of women including Jesinta Campbell, Lisa Wilkinson, Leigh Sales, Chloe Shorten, Denise Morcombe, Turia Pitt and Julie Bishop. The award itself was announced and awarded, by Dame Quentin Bryce to two women, Genevieve as Founder of Bus Stop Films and to Marita Cheng as the Founder of 2Mar Robotics. In total eight winners will share a prize pool of $100,000, including $10,000 Qantas travel bursaries and 12-month Qantas Club memberships.

This is what Genevieve had to say about winning the award: “Firstly, I was honoured to even be considered a finalist among such an incredible group of world changing women – I got to know each of the finalists on the night and they are nothing short of amazing. Nothing happens without a team and supporters and Bus Stop Films wouldn’t be able to do what it does without a dedicated team of people who believe in the impact the film studies program is having. This scholarship will help Bus Stop in its efforts to become sustainable and scale its program. It will be put towards creating a film studies curriculum and more which is very exciting. I’m so grateful that the judges wanted to see this award invested into Bus Stop Films, we are the only organisation in the world dedicated to helping people with an intellectual disability have a ‘film school experience’ and make professional short films with industry mentors with the aim of helping to increase English and literacy skills as well as life ready skills, confidence and wellbeing. Thank you to Women’s Weekly Magazine for supporting young women with these awards.”

For the full story, buy a copy of The Australian Women’s Weekly on sale Thursday September 24.

For more information on all the winners visit WW: http://goo.gl/USp1yJ