Mia seals Telstra Young Business Woman award

An off-the-cuff idea was translated into a successful business idea by Mia Klitsas.

Young gun Mia seals Telstra award

WHEN Mia Klitsas encountered a problem, she came up with a solution.

Eight years on, she has been crowned Telstra Victorian Young Business Woman of the Year.

A marketing graduate from RMIT, Ms Klitsas launched Millie and More in 2006. Her feminine hygiene range, sold under the Moxie label, is now widely exported.

Ms Klitsas, 32, grew tired of fishing around in her handbag for sanitary items that had fallen out of broken packaging. “It was one of those off-the-cuff things where I thought, there must be a way to package them better,” she said.

She experimented before coming up with a range of fashionable tins. With a business partner, Millie and More was quickly snapped up.

“We were fortunate because it was a unique offer and there wasn’t anything like it as far as we knew,” she said.

Ms Klitsas said through her involvement with women’s causes, she became aware of girls in Uganda struggling with managing their monthly cycle.

They were taking days off school and even quitting because they did not have access to sanitary items.

Ms Klitsas launched the Pads for Pads program. For every sanitary pad sold, one is donated to a girl in Uganda. To date, 7000 girls have been helped.

She received the gong on Tuesday and will compete at a ­nat­ional level on November 26.

Originally published as Mia seals Telstra Young Business Woman award