Associate Professor David MacKenzie currently holds an adjunct position at the Gonski Institute for Education at the University of New South Wales. Following secondary teaching, from 1988-2003, he taught youth workers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and then took up a senior research role at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University, from 2003 -2018. His continuing research and development interests focus on young people and youth policy, homelessness and social and educational disadvantage. With Chris Chamberlain, he formulated the influential Australian cultural definition of homelessness and developed the methodology for estimating homelessness in Australia that has been adopted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In 2007-2008, he was one of the four Commissioners responsible for the National Youth Commission Inquiry into Youth Homelessness [NYC] and influential report Australia’s Homeless Youth. From 2010-2018, David was the developer of the Community of Schools and Services model of early intervention [COSS Model] researched and prototyped in Geelong – The Geelong Project. In 2021, David was the founding CEO of Upstream Australia Ltd, a not-for-profit field-building intermediary organization advocating for place-based collective impact system change and backbone support platform supporting funded communities implementing the COSS Model – e.g. The Albury Project - and yet to be funded communities working to adopt the COSS Model.

Dr Tammy Hand is currently the Deputy CEO of Upstream Australia Ltd, a purpose-built not-for-profit field-building intermediary organization advocating for place-based collective impact system change and backbone support platform supporting funded and not-yet-funded communities implementing the Community of Schools and Services (COSS) Model. Tammy is a founding member of the Upstream International Living Lab which is focused on the development and international scale-up of the COSS Model. Tammy also holds the position of adjunct senior research fellow at the Gonski Institute for Education at the University of New South Wales. Tammy is a social researcher whose broad interests are focused on social and educational outcomes for young people, specifically at the nexus of in/equality, structural and non-structural barriers, social and system change and reform. With David MacKenzie, Tammy led the influential AHURI funded research project – Redesign of a homelessness service system for young people. This research, as well as influencing policy was awarded for being in the Top 5 Most Downloaded Reports for 2020. Much of Tammy’s current work is focused on the implementation, development, and developmental evaluation of the COSS Model, which supports vulnerable young people and their families across a range of risk and protection factors, including youth homelessness, to avoid crises.

Dr Peter Gill is a research fellow in the Institute for Health and Sport at Victoria University, Melbourne. Peter has trained and worked in the field of Psychology continuously since 2000. Peter graduated from an accredited 4 year sequence of study in 2003, winning the APS prize and a Vice Chancellor scholarship, and completed a PhD which focused on masculine wellbeing and identity in 2009. Peter completed a Master of Applied Psychology from Latrobe University in 2020, and a Master of Community Psychology from Victoria University in 2022, and is a registered Psychologist. Peter has been a full-time lecturer in Psychology since 2010. Peter has researched homelessness for 15 years, focusing on community and place-based approaches to reducing homelessness, and has more recently been involved in building Community of Schools and Services models of early intervention [COSS Model] in Melbourne. Peter has also published journal articles on topics such as immigration adjustment, masculinity, problem gambling, and post traumatic growth.