Inspiring young wāhine into health careers

HealthCarePlus’s Grants for Good recipient GirlBoss is using its funding to open doors for young wāhine entering health careers across Aotearoa.

Alexia Hilbertidou, founder of Girlboss, was 16 years old when she noticed how few women were entering STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) careers. So she went about building the gender-gap fix for herself. A decade on, and Girlboss New Zealand is now Aotearoa’s largest network for young women, with more than 20,000 members across 400-plus schools. This year, backed by a HealthCarePlus Grant for Good, the organisation is now targeting its support at the country’s health workforce.

The result is GirlBoss Edge: Healthcare, a ten-day immersive ‘career accelerator’ school-holiday programme that ran for the first time over the April 2026 Easter school holidays. Delivered virtually, it reached young women from all across the country, including rural and regional communities that often miss out. More than 1700 participants took part, supported by 100-plus healthcare professionals, giving these young women exposure to industries within the health sector they may not otherwise have considered. Each participant received mentoring and heard from inspiring speakers across the healthcare space. Each young woman also completed a real-world challenge, using STEM thinking to improve health outcomes for young women across the motu.

Challenge winners were then announced by Minister of Health, Simeon Brown on 30 May 2026. All submissions have been reviewed by leaders at Sport New Zealand’s Balanced Female Health initiative, meaning these young women’s ideas are being taken seriously at a national level and are having an ongoing impact in how our health sector is run.

“I grew up not seeing many people who looked like me in leadership or in senior roles in healthcare,” says Alexia Hilbertidou. 

With only 7 per cent of doctors currently Māori or Pasifika, the gap is large. “Our GirlBoss Edge: Healthcare programme drew 481 Māori and Pasifika participants, and each of them wants to shift these terrible statistics. I am Samoan and deeply passionate about Pasifika wāhine. I want every young woman in New Zealand to believe she can make a difference, whatever her background, her postcode, or what school she attended.”

The funding was really what made this programme a reality. Because HealthCarePlus covered facilitation, resources and speaker costs, the programme was completely free to participants – and that mattered enormously. And with New Zealand facing workforce shortages in health, it’s hoped this work will help to build the workforce of the future. 

“We want young wāhine to see themselves not just as future patients or carers, but as future doctors, researchers, public health leaders and innovators,” Alexia says.

She speaks of one participant, for example, a 17-year-old Samoan mum of twins from Motueka, who logged on to be mentored by Dr Ineke Meredith, a Samoan general surgeon, and Dr Nini Prescott, a Tongan GP inspiring a new generation online through her TikTok channel. “That connection only happened because the programme was free.”

What drew GirlBoss to HealthCarePlus was a shared sense of purpose.

“It’s an organisation that genuinely believes in better health for you and your whānau, every day and for life. So it was a perfect fit for us and our mission at GirlBoss.”

Of the programme graduates, 85 per cent described the experience as “life-changing”, while 98 per cent now felt more confident to pursue a career in healthcare, and 99 per cent said the role models showed them what was possible. 

Alexia is particularly delighted with HealthCarePlus, as they were able to put backing behind a concept that hadn’t yet been proven with numbers. She now hopes the programme becomes a permanent pipeline for women into health careers – and the signs are already there. One graduate, Rhea, signed up to volunteer at Starship Hospital afterwards, saying, “I would have never done that if I hadn’t had the confidence boost from GirlBoss.”

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