About aester

a regenerative development & leadership studio

We are devoted to deep rooted flowering of people, places, and projects. We orient toward the radiantly beautiful, but grounded potential that wants to come to life through people, places, and projects. This is a deliberate shift away from parsing out problems and designing technical solutions. Our work is seeking to evoke aliveness, integration, and wholeness. We bridge the known and the emerging—supporting founders, leaders, and communities ready to transform outdated paradigms and cultivate radically new ways of thinking, being, and creating.

Rooted in integrative processes, adaptive leadership, and an adherence to living systems and the ways that power and life force flows, we illuminate pathways for regenerative development that honor complexity, wisdom, and the mysterious unfolding of life. We are committed to healing our collective relationships—with land, with Earth, and with each other—by bringing forth projects and practices that reveal our deepest collaborative potential.

Our practice is an invitation to interrupt our habitual ways of thinking, engaging, and designing, to step beyond conventional boundaries, to listen deeply, and to co-create thriving futures that emerge from reverence, intuition, and a recognition of the wild and sublime entanglement of ecology with our common humanity.

We are here to create in service to beautiful and bountiful life.

We work with…

• founders of communities, developments, projects, & organizations

• leaders seeking regenerative guidance

• teams, communities, & boards

• municipalities

• legacy landholders

Who is aester?

David Todd

As a trusted regenerative guide, David is here to help founders, leaders, and communities evolve and flourish.

He’s a bit of a shape-shifter—part teacher and facilitator, part designer and strategist, part consultant and community developer to name a few. He’s been an educator for over 25 years and a real estate professional for over 20 years. He’s guided developers, investors, founders, and built environment entrepreneurs through the adventures of aspirational projects, ecosystem development, and business transformations.

David has been a pioneer out on the fertile edges of regenerative real estate. It’s never been purely transactional for David, it’s always relational, aspirational, and rooted in wholeness. He's collaborated on residential Living Building Challenge and Passive House projects, cottage clusters and cohousing developments, and years of systemic community engagement to initiate culture shifts and market transformations needed to support these efforts.

David’s work is devoted to field building, community development, and placemaking. He designs and initiates ecosystem partner engagement that cultivates strong, networked relationships across leading edge practitioners, aligned capital, and development partners.

At the heart of it all, David helps people, communities, and organizations develop culture, capability, and consciousness that honors life and enables flourishing.

This deeply ecological work rarely relies on textbook practices—it asks us to sense and respond in complex situations. It requires ongoing learning and attuned presence, and David is devoted to the inner work that lends potency and vitality to the outer work. He also weaves his placemaking and real estate practice with executive depth coaching, men’s circles, and community workshop facilitation.

This work is a deep vocation for David, but beyond this he loves to get outside and move—year-round cold river plunges, #sunrisewonderwanders, and as much tennis in the park as possible. You’re likely to find him with a pencil behind his ear and a sketchbook in hand, ready to gather a few thoughts, map something out, dream up some housing type design or redesign some daily object that could be made more simply and beautifully.