Riley Ohler M.Ed (He/him)

After the sudden loss of his son Colin in 2018, Riley focused on his three main values of Love – Connection – Community as a way to continue living and adapting to the new world this loss created. With a difficult lifelong journey ahead, Riley began where he was most comfortable with empathy, allowing him to fully embrace the ambiguity of loss, unique ways of healing and the authenticity to the grief process.

In his pursuit of his values Riley has embarked as a Service Designer with J5 Design in Calgary Alberta. There he consults with clients to bring creativity to some of society’s biggest challenges. His main portfolio of work is within the Government of Alberta. In the past year Riley has released two high profile projects to help Albertans, including the Affordability Payment Portal serving over 500K users, and Shelter Exchange an app to better understand shelter occupancy and capacity. Understanding and living through grief and traumatic loss gave Riley the ability to be adept at even the most intense government deadlines while focusing on the user and human side of our work.

Riley continues to pursue lifelong learning opportunities and as a former educator in a Calgary Jr. High School he completed his Masters of Education in Design learning in 2021. He even has three fun children’s books related to his passion for Agriculture.