Tonié was until fairly recently a classically trained ARIA award-winning performer come gender-creative theatrical virtuoso guitarist striptease performing spectacularist !…. until they quit their job at the Victorian College of the Arts Melbourne University to pursue a simpler life.

Now they focus on building community resilience, renovating, downshifting, growing food and working at a local op-shop. Tonié is an active member of the Degrowth Network Australia (Melbourne branch) and is one of the organisers of this degrowth webinar series. In the future, Tonié intends to study food growing (horticulture) focussing on cultivating resilient food growing for the future. Tonié is particularly interested in building community skills and trust to enable a smoother transition to a downshifted steady-state non-capitalist "sustainable" economy in order to avoid ecological destruction and the worst effects of global heating.