Kerry Fitzmaurice
Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (10:07): It gives me great pleasure to commend the International Women’s Day 2020 Selina Sutherland Award recipient, Kerry Fitzmaurice. She is a local who lives in Plenty and is someone who has given me much advice over the years, but it is her career and her outstanding contributions to her profession as an orthoptist spanning 40 years and her remarkable community service that made her a fitting winner of this award. Kerry as an educator has taught at all levels of the Victorian education system, from primary through to higher education. Kerry has combined her educational background with orthoptic clinical training to develop training programs to assist people with vision impairment to maximise the use of their residual vision. Holding joint position as a senior orthoptist at the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind and lecturer at Lincoln Institute, Kerry began research into the underlying physiology of vision techniques and easy-to-follow learning strategies she developed. The success of this early work led to the introduction of orthoptic-led vision rehabilitation at the RVIB and development work for all major agencies in low vision across Australia. She has done so much as well in the Plenty community with scouts, with the historical society, and together with Neisha Forbes she was able to get Selina Sutherland posthumously added to the Victorian women’s honour roll. Congratulations, Kerry, and thank you, Jenny Mikakos, for being our guest speaker for the night— (Time expired)