Who we are

The founder of Doing Something Good and Collaboratory Melbourne, David is passionate about developing strategic programs that enable individuals, communities and organisations to come together and effectively address society’s biggest challenges.

He is a highly regarded facilitator who specialises in designing engaging programs that build the capability of stakeholders to come together and create socially innovative solutions that make a measurable difference on the issues that matter to them.

In his work, David draws from innovative methodologies including human-centred design, lean startup, strategic foresight, and systems thinking, and over 15 years of experience working with communities and organisations across Australia and around the world.

A graduate of the School for Social Entrepreneurs program in 2011, he was named Melbourne Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012 and one of The Age’s Melbourne Magazine Top 100 most “passionate, powerful and provocative personalities of 2012”.

Julian began his work with young social entrepreneurs and their enterprises ten years ago with the Foundation for Young Australians. Since that time he has followed his passions to better understand how entrepreneurs learn, the relationship between innovation and communities of practice, and how entrepreneurial approaches can contribute to solving complex social challenges.

Along the journey he has found himself getting paid to play piano, translate Spanish, teach classes across primary, secondary and tertiary education, mentor social entrepreneurs, facilitate startup accelerators, make coffee, design leadership programs, facilitate innovation workshops and deliver keynotes on work futures (not in that order).

Julian has also been working on a PhD for the past four years about Coworking, and has written about the changing culture of work and learning for freelancers and entrepreneurs Julian is insatiably curious about the gap many of us hold between our current experiences of work, what we most desire for the future and how we might design new ventures and work pathways that enable more us to engage in work we love within organisations that thrive. He draws on all of these experiences when engaged in work with Doing Something Good.

Melina is a global citizen, social entrepreneur and community organiser with a passion for facilitating groups and individuals to do great things. Over the past 15 years her work has included cross sector collaboration addressing housing affordability, co-founding the national global ideas sharing unconference, Trampoline Day, and co-founding the Social Entrepreneurship Unit of World Vision Australia.

In 2008 Melina was deployed to Battambang, Cambodia as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development (AYAD) to work with Saboras Organisation as a Strategic Development Adviser. A year later, she co-founded the social enterprise Kinyei Organisation to generate and support innovative social projects including a vocational training espresso cafe (Kinyei Cafe) and cultural heritage bicycle tour Soksabike Tours.

After returning to Melbourne in 2013, Melina held the position of General Manger at Richmond-base coworking space, Inspire9 for three years. In addition to co-facilitating the Local Food Launchpad with Doing Something Good, she is working as a strategic collaborator and startup ecosystem adviser to the City of Melbourne in its work to develop the Startup Action Plan.

The founder of Peer Academy and the School of Participatory Design, Kylie Long is a highly regarded facilitator, mediator, strategic planner and social innovator. For more than 15 years she has been working with communities and organisations around Australia to build their capacity to effectively address society’s biggest challenges together.

For the last five years Kylie has been working with the public purpose sector to develop conscious and rigorous practices in participatory design, and help them codesign effective responses to complex social and environmental issues, with the people affected by them. This has led her to work across a wide range of areas including family violence, education, youth issues, homelessness, indigenous rights, land usage and water access.

Kylie draws from extensive experience and years of study in the fields of groupwork, dispute resolution, human-centred design, action research, lean startup, agile project management and placemaking. She is a graduate of the AngelCube accelerator program for technology startups, and was a finalist for TechCrunch Disrupt’s Social Innovation Award in 2015. She is currently completing her studies in process oriented psychology.

Kylie joins the Doing Something Good team as a facilitator and mentor for the 2018 Local Food Launchpad accelerator program.

New Zealand born Ben McMenamin is a chef, environmentalist and social entrepreneur . After working as a chef for more than 10 years and gaining a degree at RMIT, Ben has realised the power food has at bringing people together and catalysing social change.

Ben has cooked with a number of great social initiatives including the Food Know How project, Scarf Community Dinners, Give a Fork Sustainable Seafood lunch, OzHarvest and more! His work as a food educator has taken him all over Australia presenting at sustainability conferences and community festivals.

Ben’s passion for food and education is matched only by his love of gardening! While at RMIT, Ben started a student project called Greening RMIT dedicated to creating more urban gardens and increasing food literacy on campus. He has hosted numerous gardening workshops and cooking demonstrations for students and staff alike.

In 2016, Ben joined the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance as the Membership Officer and Co-founded the Fair Food Challenge, to promote a more fair, healthy and accessible food system. This year Ben joins the Doing Something Good team as a facilitator and mentor for the 2018 Local Food Launchpad accelerator program.