Unlock better choices
I’m Laura. Wayfinder Labs is my invitation to rethink what the built environment can be, together.
Change is hard
But it’s easier when you begin an understanding of where you are and where you want to go.
Wayfinder Labs exists to inspire collective efforts to realise long-term, lasting improvements in the built environment. Our curiosity is contagious and we love to test assumptions. We believe stories are both the reason things are the way they are but also offer a portal to a different future.
Our mission is to make possible a new citizen-led paradigm for built environment design by increasing everyone’s capacity to recognise their role in the system and their ability to influence outcomes. If we are to live in a world where everyone has choices that are good for individual, shared and planetary health, we must change the story about who influences the built environment and the benefits it offers.
The Wayfinder Approach
Wayfinder Labs is your partner in this kind of built environment design. We call it system innovation. We can build your capacity to effect lasting change in a few ways –with training, workshop facilitation and strategy consulting. Our training and workshops are modular. Choose one or a combination to help you approach your next challenge systemically. If you would like to approach a strategy or initiative systemically from vision to iteration, we can be your partner and guide for the life of the project. We’ll identify the sequence of with workshops, appraisal and engagement activities that will help you zoom in and out of the project context to surface and cocreate high leverage interventions that unlock better choices for your community.
You can catalyse this kind of change and there are many ways to engage in the movement. Join our network, read different perspectives on built environment design, pitch an idea, or read on to find the service that fits you and your community.
Systems innovation
Make lasting change happen
Lasting change requires strategic focus over scattered effort. It requires participatory research to understand the factors driving the momentum of the status quo and to design a vision of the future that motivates change.
I offer research consulting tailored to your project so you can find leverage, validate ideas and unlock solutions that set lasting change in motion.
Book a discovery call to explore how we might tap into systems innovation to tackle your complex challenge.
Investment logic mapping
An holistic take on investment facilitation
Accredited investment management system facilitation to help you shape an investment that tells a story of systemic change.
Facilitation & training
Build your capacity to design and motivate change
Bring a project to unpack through a system lens. Tailored workshops to develop your system thinking mindsets and explore the factors that enable or constrain your vision.
Coming soon: Be part of a cohort of people with a passion for unlocking choices that are better for people and planet. Join the waiting list to be notified when the masterclass intake opens.
“I envision a future where transport stokes community, brings joy and contributes to people’s wellbeing.”
About Dr Laura Aston
With experience across government, research, consulting, and advocacy, and a PhD on how the built environment shapes travel behaviour, I see the world through a systems lens.
I founded Wayfinder Labs when balancing my professional duties with projects I was passionate about and nurturing relationships that deepened my sense of community and identity as part of the system I was designing, became unsustainable.
Two key moments deepened this reflection: discovering the power of values-based messaging and realising the absence of community input to decarbonisation discussions.
These insights led me to start my own business in 2024 and build a business that tackled unsolved problems while offering the flexibility I needed to be present with my family and continue my commitment to developing myself. I founded Wayfinder Labs to unlock better, more inclusive choices through values-driven communication, continuous experimentation and systemic thinking. I’m excited to keep building a business that aligns with my values and creates meaningful, flexible work for others too.