ABOUT US
Diverse and versatile, ‘The Greenshoot Difference’ is felt through all stages of the consultation process. With a vast range of service offerings, we do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach, but instead, tailor our engagement to meet each client’s needs.
Over the years we have developed expertise across many domains, including
- complex stakeholder environments
- infrastructure development
- precinct planning
- community engagement
- working with Traditional Owners
- Indigenous knowledge systems
- tertiary education strategy and campus planning
Our Values
Our work is underpinned by values that help us build affinity with stakeholders and communities, ensuring relationships are left stronger and more trusting at the end of our engagement process. To achieve this we anchor in core values that help us work in the background to help our clients succeed.
Our People
Our carefully crafted team is driven by a desire to create practical and impactful solutions that create a benchmark for how things could be in a future where all voices matter. Take the time to find out a little more about what makes us tick.

Theo Gouskos Managing Director
Theo is a specialist Strategy and Engagement consultant working with clients across a broad range of industries including commercial, government, the not-for-profit and tertiary education sectors. Theo draws on a history of working at senior executive levels to support clients in vision and mission setting, strategy development, strategy activation and evaluation, stakeholder engagement and partnership development to enable social impact at scale. This work is underpinned by creating the space and time to draw on a diversity of community voices and perspectives to achieving organisational objectives in socially complex environments.
A Director on the Board of Indigenous Architecture and Design Victoria (IADV), Theo also has extensive experience in working with Traditional Owners to implement community led aspirations on transformational projects, coupled with extensive experience working in remote communities. Theo is Managing Director of Greenshoot Consulting, and in conjunction with Victoria’s only Indigenous registered architect, Jefa Greenaway, has developed a unique fusion of creative, urban and architectural design and Indigenous engagement. This work includes the ability to develop strong cross-cultural project aspirations. The Greenshoot team has strong architectural and creative design qualifications and experience, and brings a comprehensive track record in supporting project teams to foreground Indigenous knowledge and culture into the heart of large scale infrastructure projects.

Jefa Greenaway Principal Associate
Jefa Greenaway (Waiwan/Kamilaroi) is an Architect, educator, writer, presenter and an advocate for creative problem solving. Jefa routinely operates as the Principal consultant for a range of complex projects, liaising, directing and overseeing the work of a range of stakeholders, including but not limited to clients, municipal councils, engineers, cost planners and as well as suppliers and manufacturers. Jefa is also a co-founding Director of Indigenous Architecture + Design Victoria (IADV) a not-for-profit organisation focussing on strengthening culture and design in the built environment, is the first and only Registered Indigenous architect in Victoria, and co-authored the International Indigenous Design Charter. Jefa has extensive involvement working with and for Indigenous communities in Victoria and beyond and has drawn upon his cultural connections and sensibilities to develop a framework of working with community which eschews the old modes of engagement in favour of advocating a method which ensures meaningful consultation, collaboration and participation, utilising deep listening and design thinking to realise the aspirations of others while acting as a conduit to the process. Jefa has demonstrated his commitment to embedding cultural connectedness within the built environment, through sound stakeholder engagement, culturally appropriate design and a firm professional ethic for clients.

Jeremy Gaden Principal
Jeremy Gaden has worked in Victoria’s creative sector for the last 25 years, and has a background in venue management, festival coordination, producing, state government and organisational leadership. He has worked for a wide variety of arts organisations, including Melbourne Fringe, National Institute of Circus Arts, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and Melbourne International Arts Festival. Jeremy was Program Manager at Footscray Community Arts Centre, where he oversaw many of the organisation’s large-scale community engagement projects, and the inaugural director of The Substation in Newport, delivering the final stage of a large infrastructure project and establishing its position as a regionally significant contemporary arts centre. Most recently, Jeremy has held the position of Senior Manager, Partnership Programs at Creative Victoria where he oversaw many of the Victorian state government’s creative industries development programs, including those that support economic and social outcomes. Specifically, he was responsible for Creative Victoria’s regional development, Aboriginal, Social Impact, Education, and Contemporary Music programs. In this position Jeremy was also responsible for many intra-government relationships, such as those with Regional Development Victoria and Visit Victoria.

Narelle Glynn Associate Principal
Narelle is an experienced Talent and Transformation consultant who leverages a deep background in professional services across a broad range of industries. She has held a series of leadership roles in Australia, Europe and the USA where she delivered organisation-wide strategic and transformation projects spanning organisational development, succession planning, employee engagement, employer branding, digital transformation and process improvement.
Narelle is an experienced facilitator and instructional designer who combines a deep understanding of her audience with comprehensive enablement to deliver outcomes that ‘stick’. She supports her clients in understanding and evaluating the gap between current and desired state and customising solutions to close them.

Stasinos Mantzis Senior Architect
Practicing for 20+ years, Stas is an experienced registered architect and educator. His roles have primarily been in client engagement from master planning, project design, town planning through to design development and delivery. He has industry experience in a variety of project typologies and sectors including education, retirement living and aged care,
community, sports and recreation, cultural, and multi-residential work.
He has been teaching at RMIT University in Melbourne as a design studio leader for 20 years, running architectural design studio classes in the Bachelors and Masters courses and supervising final year students. More recently, with his students, he has been working with First Nations community leaders developing First Nations community led projects. He has a strong interest in how culture and cultural knowledge can be integrated in all aspects of the built environment.

Sofia Echesortu Design Strategist
Sofia is a Design Strategist with a degree in Spatial & Graphic Design and International Business from UNSW Sydney. Within her practice she focuses on building multidisciplinary platforms and engaging in collaborative practice-led methods to facilitate and enable impactful and sustainable change. Her past experience includes design research, strategy and facilitation, visual communication, photography, model making, site analysis, placemaking and public space design. Her experience as a designer spans across a broad range of industries including design and architecture, tertiary education sector and media production. Sofia’s Design Honours research project was developed in collaboration with Finding Infinity’s 2030 City of Melbourne proposal to build sustainable solutions that will drive our cities and our cultures to become self-sufficient. Sofia incorporates her keen interest in sustainability, cultural diversity and community-led initiatives to make meaningful change to our built and natural environments.

Nick Harding Consultant & Researcher
Nick graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in History) and joined Greenshoot as a researcher and consultant in December 2021. The major focus of his studies was on conflict, colonisation and its impact on the developing world. His experience working with young people in out-of-home care at Mackillop Family Services and with students at one of the University of Melbourne’s residential colleges cemented his commitment to advancing the basic principles of social justice: access; equity; diversity; participation and human rights and these principles underpin his work.

Edward Coyne Consultant & Researcher
Ed has a tertiary background in architecture and sustainable design, graduating from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Environments in 2018 before completing a Masters of Urban Horticulture (2022). His studies reflect his passion for social + environmental conscious development, combining areas of design with sustainable and nature-based schools of thought. Ed’s experience of working and living in a remote community near Fitzroy Crossing (WA) cemented his passion for socially conscious work and a community focussed career. Returning from Western Australia, he continued to work in a residential/school environment, living with and assisting First Nations students from the Kimberley region in their adaption to school and home life in Melbourne. Ed joined Greenshoot in 2022 to support design, research + community consultation.

Grace Carver Consultant
Grace is in an Interior Designer (Hons, RMIT 2015) with a background in the arts sector and accounting, holding experience in design, public programming, business management and performing arts. Her Interior practice is founded in the process and role of designer-as-facilitator, for places and systems that engender meaningful and responsive outcomes. Her past experience in the arts sector includes design research, visual communication, writing, public programming and cultural engagement. Grace brings a spatial, cross-disciplinary approach to every project, for outcomes that affect and connect people, communities, cities, and cultures.

Sian Tjia Hennessy Consultant
Sian (she/they) is a final year tertiary student in the Bachelor of Design at the University of Melbourne, double majoring in Graphic Design and Performance Design. Sian’s multidisciplinary design practice focuses on how the experiential design of spaces can be used for storytelling and gaining deeper engagement with community. Sian’s background in social activism, particularly focused on issues surrounding race and intersectionality, is the foundation for their practice. Sian’s skills include concept design, design research, graphic design, communication design, and production management. Sian’s works have been featured in MSDx Summer 2020 and MSDx Winter 2021.

Steph Griffin Consultant
Steph is a Consultant with an Arts degree from the ANU and a Bachelor of Design in Architecture from RMIT. Since graduating Steph has been part of award-winning Melbourne practices ARM and Lyons Architecture where she gained experience across multiple design phases working on public projects including educational, cultural and university institutions. Her experience includes, concept design, design research, visual communication, site analysis and tutoring. Steph has developed strong skills in research and community engagement and is focused on community led approaches to design and sustainability.

Claire Newton Consultant
Claire graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Master of Landscape Architecture (2022) with a background in horticulture and journalism. Her multi-disciplinary education lends itself to the collaborative scenarios which value process as much as outcome. Claire’s passion for built environment design is driven by ecological sustainability and socio-cultural equality. Her Masters thesis focused on co-design with Tati Tati – a Murray River Traditional Owner group – exploring the role of landscape architecture on leveraging government policy and public discourse surrounding the implementation of cultural flows.

Cayley Chan Architectural Assistant
Cayley joined Greenshoot Consulting x Greenaway Architects in 2021 and is working across public and cultural projects. She has a wide ranging skill set that includes design ideation, problem solving and visual communication.
Cayley is a valued member of the team, assisting on a variety of projects of different scale and typology.
She has a strong interest in biophilic and sustainable architecture. Her works have been featured in the Melbourne School of Design bi-annual exhibitions from 2019 to 2021 consecutively.

Thanos Matanis Archaeologist & Researcher
Thanos is an archaeologist and published writer with a penchant for the past. For over five years, he has brought value to cultural heritage bodies worldwide. These include the National Museum of Qatar, Ancient-Origins (US), Neos Kosmos Newspaper (AUS), and Ancient History Magazine (Karwansaray Publishers, ND). Thanos thrives in distilling and disseminating cultural heritage in digestible ways to new audiences.
“Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort, we are still.” -C. S. Lewis