About
Michelle Nussey’s passion is storytelling and animals. She is an actor and animal communicator (sadly only able to talk about animals and not to them so far) originally from Australia and now living in Los Angeles. For over 6 years she worked at Melbourne Zoo researching, writing and speaking about animals that hailed from all seven continents.
She fed meerkats, held a ball python and used her hand as a tree for stick insects. Michelle worked closely with guests leading them through tours and close up encounters and also engaged transient audiences while interpreting live animals’ behavior, training, conservation and care. As part of the Zoo’s conservation efforts, she was lucky enough to be involved with the program to release captive-born Eastern Barred Bandicoots to successfully increase numbers in the wild.
Michelle has travelled to Thailand to volunteer at Elephantstay, a non profit program that involves living with, caring for and learning about retired asian elephants. Inspired by her experiences, Michelle produced and performed a live solo show Gorilla, lovely Gorilla at Melbourne Fringe Festival which she wrote based on real life animal stories presented in an engaging and fun way. She can also be heard as the resident zoo expert on podcast Grain of Truth.