This month, we welcome Dr. Dominique Hes to the Regen Melbourne board, where she will take on a very special role: to represent nature. Here, Dominique reflects on the opportunities and responsibilities ahead - including what nature can teach us about purposeful governance within our organisations.  

Our work at Regen Melbourne is with and for nature and community. So it was important to us to find a way to embed the voice of nature deeply and meaningfully in our governance structure. We didn’t want to rely on policies, documents or a set of values pinned to the wall. We wanted a living, breathing voice for nature at the centre of our work. Enter Dr. Dominique Hes.

Though she needs little introduction, Dominique has spent over 20 years working in the regenerative space. After co-founding the Living Future Institute in 2012, Dominique has held roles at the University of Melbourne, Beyond Zero Emissions, Trust for Nature, City of Melbourne and is currently Chair of the Board of Directors at Greenfleet.

Dominique’s work has centred nature and regenerative practices in a range of industries and sectors. Her book, ‘Designing for Hope: Pathways to Regenerative Development’, co-authored with Professor Crisna du Plessis, is about to celebrate its 10th birthday. And her most recent book, ‘The Stories of Newport Lakes’ shares the hidden history of one of Melbourne’s most incredible community-driven regeneration projects.

We caught up with Dominique to discuss her appointment, and her vision for Regen Melbourne as we head deeper into 2025. 

Dominique! You’ve worked in the regenerative space for a long time. What’s the thread that’s held your interest? 

Dr. Dominique Hes: The thread you can draw is curiosity, wanting to understand multiple perspectives and ways of seeing the world and wanting to help find better ways for humans to become 'contributors' to a thriving future rather than 'extractors'. To be good ancestors to future generations and the environment we are part of. To leave a positive legacy not a negative one.

“For me to come in and say, ‘I'm nature, and my voice rules,’ wouldn’t be ‘nature’ at all. Nature would start with listening, trying little things and seeing what works. Coming up with a strategy isn’t nature. Nature is responsive to the reality of something starting small.”

How did your regenerative mindset develop – what led to that ‘a-ha’ moment? 

Dominique: During my PhD I worked my way through the engineering and science mindset and realised that better research, tools or answers were not going to enable us to be those good ancestors. It’s funny, but I ended up changing my research question five times as my thinking evolved, and I realised I was asking the wrong question. I concluded that we didn’t need more tools, analysis or research, what we needed was better stories and better ways to connect people to the wonder and beauty of 'place'. We needed to use regenerative development thinking.

What led you to Regen Melbourne? 

Dominique: I was invited to test the idea of who nature could be on the board. Having been a Non-Executive Director for 13 years now, chairing a board for four and having seen the impact a board can have, I felt frustrated at how difficult it was to give the natural systems, the environment, a voice. A voice that is authentic, like I understand First Nations people have within their meetings where totems would represent different interests. With Regen, I was excited that I could commit to an organisation that was happy to explore what having nature on the board really meant. My appointment is part of a three-year action research project exploring the enablers and barriers, legalities and opportunities of creating this position, this role, this presence at the decision making table.

Why is this particular moment the right time for you to dive into this work with us?

Dominique: I think that as a regen community in Melbourne and in Australia we are moving from the forming stage of a new idea – of niches, experimentation and exploration – and maturing into a discipline, a term that is starting to be used and applied widely. This movement is leading to a little bit of the storming stage of development. The friction that occurs when niches start rubbing shoulders as they gain momentum. This is a wonderful time, a time we should celebrate, but also a time to step up and ask ‘how do we practice what we preach?’ and create an enabling, thriving, vital ecosystem for all regen niches to start coming together and strengthening each other. I would like to be part of that, with the permission of the niches that I have spoken to about this.

Why is the concept of putting nature on the board so pertinent?

Dominique: If we agree that our businesses are based on the reality of the physical resources around us, we wouldn't be talking on computers if we didn't have the elements that make up the computers. We wouldn't have cities if we didn't have the concrete or the steel, and we wouldn't have Coca Cola if we didn't have plastic and the materials that make Coca Cola. So if we agree on that reality, that everything we've created is based on the natural resources, and those resources are based on complex systems that are impacted by what we do, then those systems are a stakeholder, like any other stakeholder that we represent on our boards. So for any board, it makes sense to have somebody that represents the complexity of the system that they're physically interacting to create their products.

“Regeneration, at its core, is about listening to the reality of the people and system of place. Reality, physical reality, that is the critical word there… Reality is the water, the air, the soil, the nutrients in our food, the way our bodies function, the way fire burns and so on.”

How might the day-to-day realities of this role manifest for you?

Dominique: When nature establishes a new system, it isn’t established as an old growth forest, right? The lichen comes and eats the rocks that turns into the soil, a few other processes happen, and it breaks down the rocks a bit more, and then there's a few more processes, and then there's the little grasses, and then it brings more water, and then the grasses die, compost down, and it holds more. It builds and it builds and it builds. And then the system is built up from the reality of that place: the climate, the water, the nutrients. So for me to come in and say, “I'm nature, and my voice rules,” wouldn’t be ‘nature’ at all. Nature would start with listening, trying little things and seeing what works. Coming up with a strategy isn’t nature. Nature is responsive to the reality of something starting small. Does it work? Yeah, then we'll do more of it. Wce're building layers of capacity, as opposed to saying, “I have the answer, here it is.” 

So my strategy on the board will be to listen for a while and maybe do the one or two things like I did at the last meeting, and seeing how that resonates, and then build who I am on the board and who nature is on the board from feedback, as opposed to my expectation of what it will be like.

What excites you the most about the potential of your role on the Regen Melbourne board? 

Dominque: Regeneration, at its core, is about listening to the reality of the people and system of place. Reality, physical reality, that is the critical word there. Often we think reality is the frames we have created to understand and manage the world: economics, government, law, money, religion. But these are all constructs that try to help us make sense of the complex world we live in. 

Reality is the water, the air, the soil, the nutrients in our food, the way our bodies function, the way fire burns and so on. "What is the reality of here?" is the starting point, the reality is the many flows that enable our stories, our lives. So, regen is fundamentally: 'how do we bring increased health, vitality and viability to those flows?' 'How do we support the resilience of all life including us to adapt and thrive through change?'

If our role as humans is to do this, to help the flows be vital and support everything they interact with we create a care and understanding with the reality of the places we work and live in. And it is in this caring that we can maybe turn the ship of western, mechanistic, extractive, imperial thinking back towards what Indigenous people call Caring for Country. This is the greatest potential for the whole regen practitioner ecosystem.

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