The Aesthetic Business Masters Awards are judged by people who know this industry from the inside. Not observers, but practitioners, founders, strategists, and educators who have built businesses, led teams, navigated regulation, and sat across the table from clinic owners working through the same challenges you are. This series introduces you to the people behind the scorecard, so you know exactly who’s reading your submission and what they’ll be looking for.
Meet: Telisa Larken
Telisa opened her new clinic in Charlestown four days before Newcastle went into COVID lockdown. Her husband had just finished renovating the space, the bookings were pouring in, the team was trained, and then everything stopped.
She went back to hospital nursing.
When the clinic reopened, she was booked out for six weeks straight, working six days a week, sometimes until 9pm, because she didn’t want a single patient to miss out. That’s how The Injectables Queen was built: not with a marketing budget, but with a clinical standard and a work ethic that kept patients coming back.
Telisa is a Registered Nurse with a background in emergency nursing who found her niche in cosmetic aesthetics in 2015. She is the Founder and Director of The Injectables Queen (TIQ), a bespoke aesthetic brand now operating across Newcastle, the Hunter, and the Central Coast. The clinic specialises in anti-wrinkle injections, dermal fillers, fat dissolving, PRP, and advanced skin treatments through TIQ’s sister brand, Skin Queen.
With a team of registered nurses, Telisa has grown TIQ from a single room in a shared health space into a multi-clinician, multi-location practice with over 670 five-star reviews. Her philosophy centres on harmonisation over transformation.
She believes cosmetic treatments should enhance individual features, restore facial balance, and preserve identity rather than distort it. Comprehensive consultations, conservative treatment planning, and honest conversations about expectations form the foundation of her clinical practice.
Beyond the treatment room, Telisa is a passionate educator and mentor for emerging cosmetic nurses. She trains practitioners in anatomical knowledge, injection technique, complication management, and the clinical confidence required to practise safely rather than chase trends. Her training approach blends theory with real-world application, and she speaks openly about the importance of risk mitigation and ongoing professional development.
Telisa is also a strong advocate for ethical marketing in the aesthetic space. In an environment where social media can amplify unrealistic standards, she maintains a focus on informed consent, realistic expectations, and regulatory awareness, building authority through consistency and results rather than hype.
She wants cosmetic nurses and clinic owners to stop looking at social media as a shortcut to credibility. She built The Injectables Queen from a single room in a shared health space into a multi-location practice with over 670 five-star reviews, and she didn’t do it with a marketing budget. She did it with clinical standards that patients trusted enough to recommend to their friends. Her message is that authority in this industry is earned through consistent results, honest consultations, and the willingness to say no when a treatment isn’t right, not through before-and-after reels or trending audio.
As a judge for the Aesthetic Business Masters Awards, Telisa Larken brings the perspective of a practitioner who has built a brand from scratch in a competitive regional market, survived a lockdown launch, and scaled without compromising clinical integrity. She’ll be looking for businesses that demonstrate genuine patient care, a team culture grounded in safety, and commercial confidence earned through results rather than shortcuts.
