Emma is a clinician at Clinic 66 in Chatswood, and the founder of NOWSIS. She has spent her career in general practice with a focus on women’s sexual and reproductive health, which is where the work that became NOWSIS began.

The pattern that started it was simple: too many women presenting with clear contraception needs, too few of those women able to afford the prescriptions Emma was writing. Twenty-dollar consults followed by four-hundred-dollar implants that the women would walk out of the clinic and never fill. Once you’ve seen it for the third time in a week, the question stops being “what’s wrong with this woman” and starts being “what’s wrong with this system”.

NOWSIS started as Emma covering the gap herself, out of her own pocket, for women her clinic couldn’t refuse but the safety net wouldn’t catch. By 2024 the demand had outgrown one clinician’s salary, and the charity was registered with the ACNC the same year.

Today Emma chairs the board, sets clinical protocol for the Protect a Sister and Scan a Sister projects, and continues to see patients at Clinic 66 — which remains NOWSIS’s delivery partner. She approves every PAS funding decision personally.