Our staff are:
committed to environmental issues and social change
experienced in understanding community behaviour and developing sustainable solutions
community psychologists and social researchers
qualified and experienced professionals.

Rob Curnow, BBSc, MPsych, Grad Dip Comm Ed, MAPS
Director

As Research Director at Community Change, much of Rob’s work has used action research strategies to examine the links between what people say they do and what they actually do. Rob has been responsible for numerous projects aimed at understanding community attitudes and behaviour and is a world leading authority on human behaviour in the waste minimisation field.

Rob often helps facilitate change as part of strategic community education and development programs to enable people’s behaviour to better match their stated intentions. He has conducted an extensive array of learning intensives with community groups, industry and government representatives, academics and volunteers.

Formerly, Rob was a senior academic in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Science at Monash University where he was Head of the School of Arts and Sciences. Currently he is an academic associate of Victoria University of Technology – Psychology Department. He is a full member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and the College of Community Psychologists.

Karen Spehr, BSc (Hons), MPsych, MAPS
Director

Karen is CC’s managing director and coordinates project implementation. She is also responsible for much of the innovation in program development at CC and specialises in the design, documentation and evaluation of behaviour change programs, based on sound theoretical and evidence based approaches. She has a particular focus on building client capacity to implement and evaluate programs and has developed numerous training materials and workshops to assist in this process.

Prior to her work with Community Change, Karen worked for a number of years as a clinical psychologist in palliative care and the community health sector, working extensively with facilities, couples, individuals and groups. Formerly, Karen was the founding Director of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement where she was responsible for the development of all centre programs and services, including a clinical teaching program for bereavement counsellors, as well as staff and psychologist supervision programs.

She is a member of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and a member of the Victoria University Master of Psychology Placement Program.

Awards – Community Change

2000 Evaluation Society of Australasia Award for Excellence in social research ‘What Works: Public Place Recycling and Litter Management’. A partnership project with Beverage Industry Environment Council with the NSW Government Waste Reduction Grants Program, administered by the NSW Environment Protection Authority.