Our Team
Aaren Topley
Founder & Principal Consultant
Aaren Topley (he/him) brings together strategic policy expertise, operational leadership, and grassroots organizing to help organizations navigate complex systems change. Over the past decade, he has secured over $66 million in funding for food security initiatives, turned around struggling programs, and built policy frameworks now used across British Columbia. His work spans municipal and provincial policy development, program design and implementation, participatory research, and multi-stakeholder facilitation.
Aaren's approach combines speed with strategic rigor. When COVID-19 hit, he mobilized "Get Growing, Victoria!" within two weeks. This program converted city greenhouses, from flowers to food production, supporting over 10,000 people in the City to grow their own food. As Director of Strategic Priorities at Fernwood Neighbourhood House, he led the operational transformation of a $350,000 social enterprise serving 1,000 people weekly, moving the program from revenue loss to financial sustainability while maintaining community accessibility. As Provincial Manager at the Public Health Association of BC, he conducted the province's first comprehensive food access assessment, directly informing policy decisions that unlocked millions in provincial investment.
Aaren specializes in scaling up successful pilots into systemic change. As Farm to School BC's first Capital Region Animator, he co-designed the regional hub model, piloted Victoria High School's Learning Farm, and applied scaling up theory to create a province-wide granting program that institutionalized school farms across multiple districts. He co-founded Victoria's Urban Food Table (Food Policy Council), successfully advocating for municipal investment and establishing governance structures that continue to influence city food policy. His participatory research methods center community voices while producing evidence that moves decision-makers and secures resources.
As a neurodivergent transman, Aaren brings lived experience of navigating systems not designed for people like him. This shapes a practice committed to ensuring those most impacted by inequitable systems lead the design of new pathways forward. He facilitates difficult conversations across power differences, builds coalitions among unlikely partners, and helps organizations move from crisis to concrete action. His consulting integrates policy analysis, strategic planning, operational design, and community-centered organizing, always with attention to who holds power and how transformation actually happens on the ground.
Based on the traditional unceded homelands of the Lekwungen people in Victoria, BC, Aaren partners with non-profits, community organizations, funders, and municipal governments ready to transform disruption into lasting systems change.
dr. Colin Dring
Founder & Principal Consultant
Colin Dring (he/him) specializes in integrating anti-colonial, justice-oriented approaches into planning, governance, and systems transformation. With over 15 years of combined experience in academia, government, and non-profit sectors working on policy, community development, and education, Colin brings both scholarly rigor and applied expertise to the work of reimagining food systems, land use, urban/rural places, and climate governance. His work bridges theory and practice, offering organizations tools to move beyond compliance-based approaches toward relational, equity-centered transformation. He holds a PhD in Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems and an MSc in Rural Planning and Development.
Colin's research and consulting practice focus on challenging the colonial, neoliberal, and technocratic assumptions embedded in planning and policy. As a Postdoctoral Researcher and Adjunct Professor at Royal Roads University, he has published widely on food system governance, equity competency development, and decolonial agricultural planning. His participatory methods and scenario-based planning approaches support organizations and governments in centering marginalized voices and designing futures rooted in justice, resilience, and care.
Colin partners with organizations seeking to transform their governance structures, planning processes, and institutional culture to align with equity and justice principles. Clients gain frameworks for decolonizing policy and practice, facilitated processes that center community voices, and actionable strategies for embedding anti-oppression into organizational systems. His work includes equity assessment and planning, participatory research and evaluation, policy analysis and development, governance design, and training on anti-colonial and justice-oriented approaches to community development.
As a queer, racialized settler who has worked alongside Indigenous communities and equity-deserving groups, Colin brings lived experience of navigating power and privilege to his practice. This shapes his commitment to pluriversal design, integrating multiple ways of knowing and create space for diverse communities to exercise self-determination. Colin's consulting bridges academic research with practical application, always centering those most impacted by systems of oppression in the work of transformation.
Based on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples in Richmond, BC, Colin helps organizations and communities transform disruption into pathways for structural change and collective renewal.
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