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David MacKenzie, Senior Research Fellow (SU ISR) & Director, Centre for Youth Development Australia (CYDA)

David MacKenzie is Director of the Centre for Youth Development Australia (CYDA) based at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University. Formerly the foundation Director of the Centre for Youth Affairs Research and Development at RMIT, David has a strong record of research and development on issues associated with homelessness. With Chris Chamberlain he is co-author of Youth Homelessness: Early intervention and prevention (1998) that outlines an early intervention policy perspective for a deeply coordinated community infrastructure of services and schools. He is also an author of the report Indigenous homelessness in Victoria.

David contributed to the national evaluation of the Commonwealth Full-Service Schools program and is an experienced program evaluator. Over the past 10 years David has served on the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Homelessness, the national SAAP Data and Research Advisory Committee, the national SAAP Information Services Committee, the JPET Needs Committee and is currently on the Victorian Integrated Data Project committee. David also leads the YouthWorx project that involves research and development of a transformative model whereby homeless and marginalized young people engage in radio broadcasting at SYN-FM. Internationally, CYDA has developed a joint centre for youth development with the Academy of Social Sciences in Liaoning Province, China and David has been appointed as the Swinburne director of the David Lam East West Institute in Hong Kong.. David has been undertaking seminal research on homelessness in Australia since 1989 and has published widely on this issue. Last year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics published ‘The Counting the Homeless 2001’ providing the population data on homelessness in Australia, and this year more detailed reports with regional breakdowns have been published for all the states and territories.

Kathy Desmond, Associate Researcher (SU ISR) & Director, KDC Consulting

Kathy Desmond has seventeen years experience working in the social and community services sector, specializing in drug and alcohol, youth, homelessness, early intervention, research, evaluation, policy development, adult education and professional development for sector workers. Kathy’s early work history was in the drug & alcohol field working with young people who were homeless or ‘at risk’ of becoming homeless. Kathy has lectured in Community Development and has designed, developed and conducted many professional development and training initiatives throughout the sector. Kathy worked for the first national census of homeless school students in 1994 with David Mackenzie and Chris Chamberlain and then went on to head up the Keeping in Touch with Schools [KITS] project. The development of the Keeping In Touch with School (KITS) Project Strategy Plan was acknowledged as a significant piece of work that foreshadowed the early intervention model that has become the School Focused Youth Service Program and the Reconnect Program.

Over the past ten years Kathy has branched out in her own research consultancy business under contracts with RMIT University, Monash University, Swinburne University and Success Works Pty. Ltd., as well as a range of community sector agencies, schools and government departments. She has consulted with other research agencies on a number of national projects including: NYARS Research into Comorbidity; Evaluation of the National Drug Strategic Framework; Partnerships Against Domestic Violence; and Evaluation of Responses to the Bringing Them Home Report. Current projects include: Hume Region Homelessness Service System Needs Analysis, Homeless in the Murray Shire (NSW) and Shekinah Homeless Services Organisational Development Project.

Dr. Adam Steen, Associate Professor in Accounting (Swinburne University)

Dr Adam Steen brings a strong career background in teaching accounting and finance in leading tertiary institutions and a growing profile in the finance industry. Successfully completing his PhD with a thesis on Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in 1997 he has continued to research in a number of areas, presenting at leading conferences and publishing in academic and business journals. Graduating with a Master of Commerce from the University of Melbourne in 1991, he built on his Bachelor of Economics (Honours) and Diploma of Education from La Trobe University. Currently, as an Associate Professor in Accounting at Swinburne University of Technology, Adam has been invited to lecture internationally and conduct short term consulting assignments with International and local organizations (including the World Bank). Adam is a CPA and member of CPA Australia’s Finance and Treasury Centre of Excellence and the Australian Venture Capital Association Limited (AVCAL).

Denny Meyer, Senior Lecturer in Statistics (Swinburne University)

Denny Meyer is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics at the Swinburne University of technology. She has co-authored two books entitled “Applied Research Design for Business and Management” (Page and Meyer, 2000, McGraw Hill) and “Business Statistics” (Mimmack, Meyer and Manas, 2001, Prentice Hall) and has published upward of 50 articles in a variety of refereed journals. She is an applied statistician, working in areas such as management, tourism, finance, mineral processing, advertising, agriculture and social research.

Liss Ralston, Statistician (SU ISR)

Liss is the statistician for the ISR. Her work involves coding, questionnaire design, data cleaning and statistical analysis for ISR surveys as well as data cleaning and analysis for large secondary data sets. Liss has extensive experience in working with ABS data (including very large data sets such as the confidential unit record files - CURFs), Valuer General’s data, Centrelink data and local council rates data. She also produces charts, figures, and tables for ISR reports.