Reimagining Melbourne for people and planet

Dominique Hess started researching and writing on regenerative development, biophilia and placemaking in 2005, working in sustainability since 1994. Her focus is on real projects, on the ground and all the messy conversations that enable it to evolve in place. She is a board director of Regen Melbourne and chair of Greenfleet and on the Circular Economy Ministerial Advisory Group. Read on for our interview with Dominique.

Describe your career trajectory and how you got to your current position?

From starting University I wanted to make the world a better place, I started a science degree wanting to cure cancer. When the person who had cancer passed away I reviewed my intentions and decided I liked the ecological aspects of science not the lab ones. Being out in nature. So I focused in the early 90s on Botany at the University of Melbourne and then environmental law, economics and science at the university of Amsterdam. When I returned there were no grad jobs so I did a masters in process engineering at RMIT focusing on Cleaner Production. I was interested in this through someone I met in Amsterdam. I then worked as a consultant in LCA and product design in Europe until the end of 98 when I started a PhD back in Melbourne. This was at RMIT in the Architecture school at the time in the Center for Design. In 2005 I finished the PhD which was on how to support the update by addressing the barriers of designing and building green buildings. At the end of the PhD I realised that the future was not in better LCAs, designs, technology, data, finance or any of these things. It was actually in the stories we tell people that enable them to have the will to adapt their work to be more ‘green’. The approach I landed on was Regenerative Development and Design.

I started as an academic at the University of Melbourne in 2006. From 2009 I really started ramping up my efforts to bring Regen into Melbourne. Why? because I had heard of a young engineering student who had decided to stop living because he saw no hope in the stories of peak oil. As I held the bundle of potential that was my daughter in my hands and heard this, I was gutted. I vowed to create a hopeful path for all students to be able to see they could affect the future positively. So I started by organising monthly breakfasts with a group of like minded people with interests in permaculture, biophilia, biomimicry, positive development, regenerative design, passive house, one planet living and all things contributive. In 2011 Prof Chrisna du Plessis and I started writing a book called Designing for Hope, which came out at the start of 2015. The little breakfast group brought together the community in Melbourne and Sydney around the concept of the Living Building Challenge which we then set up a Not for profit to bring to Australia.

That was my first board and in 2017 I joined Greenfleet. I became chair in 2021. I left academia in 2019 and worked for Beyond Zero Emissions and then the City of Melbourne until October 2023. I loved working at the City. But I had to start supporting my Daughter no 15 and struggling with Autism and school and their place in the world. The only role I kept was as one of the Circular Economy Ministerial Advisory Group as visiting Minister Plibersek. Between 2017 and now I also did some training in governance at the Governance Institute of Australia and AICD.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve encountered in your career, and how did you overcome it?

My biggest challenge was my own trauma, I have PTSD from being abducted as a kid living in Brazil. This meant that I dealt badly with feedback or challenges, always going into a 9 year old’s fight, flight, freeze, and in my case ‘a burst into tears’ reaction. This has been career limiting.  I also have recently been diagnosed with ADHD.

If you could go back in time, what piece of advice would you give yourself as you first embarked on your career?

Not sure, I think life makes us, if i did anything differently would i be who I am now? I guess I identify my own barriers and blockers earlier. Or be more reflective, observant, and present would have been nice. Don’t assume you are always failing and have to prove yourself could be another. I have been given two amazing pieces of advice that have shaped me, ‘listen with the intent to learn with whomever you are speaking to’ and ‘be an educator not an advocate’ change is then in the agency of the person you are teaching.

How do you unwind after work?

Read, sleep, walk the dog and around my favourite place Newport Lakes.