Regional Trustees

Michelle Dunscombe is based on Taungurung land in rural Victoria, Australia and is an enthusiastic community development practitioner, facilitator and trainer. She is passionate about strengthening regional and rural communities particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, to discover possibilities, develop community leadership capacity, build community resilience and support community led projects. She draws on her experience working with local and state governments, a community foundation, the private and the not for profit sectors to inform her work with communities.

Michelle is an ABCD Institute faculty member, Vice Chair of ABCD Asia Pacific Inc, a Regional Development Australia Hume committee member and a former Country Correspondent for Australia with a wealth of experience working with communities and community organisations.  Michelle utilises asset based community development methodologies and participatory leadership practices to support community led initiatives.

Michelle has experience working with disaster affected communities across Australia and internationally, happily sharing her lived and professional experience in disaster preparedness and recovery using ABCD principles and practices.


Cissy Rock is a qualified sociodramatist who is committed to community-led development processes, combining systematic thinking with grassroots doing. Cissy loves working with people, finding ways for all to have a voice and to fully participate in meetings, communities, and organisations. Her approach is collaborative, dedicated and passionate. Cissy addresses symptoms of inclusion, exclusion and patronisation, working within the dynamics of systems in ways that develop and build social cohesion.

She is not afraid to give her opinion, to make a stand for social justice, or roll up her sleeves to help make things happen. With over 20 years experience working alongside communities and with government, integrity is at the heart of her work.

Cissy set up Community Think in 2015, to stand in her belief that together we do make a difference. Through Community Think she has been involved in campaigns, place-based community organising, community engagement processes, supervision of people working in the community sector, workshops and facilitation.

Cissy lives in Petone in Lower Hutt, Aotearoa New Zealand and enjoys drinking coffee, eating cinnamon brioche, traveling and building connections wherever she goes.


IACD is well established in both Australia and New Zealand, but needs to grow its membership across the Pacific Islands. We have held recent major conferences in Rotorua, Auckland and Brisbane. There are active national and regional CD networks across the Oceania Region with which IACD seeks to partner including ACDA (Aotearoa Community Development Association) in New Zealand and the Australian Association of Community Workers and State networks across Australia. Dee Brooks is keen to share her contacts and her work.