About
I'm Barrett Bryan-Soron — a political operator, systems builder, organizer, and trainer based in Vancouver, on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
I've been Avi Lewis's campaign director across multiple cycles. Most recently, I ran operations for his 2025–2026 campaign for the leadership of the federal NDP.
He won on the first ballot with 56% of the vote — a clean majority in a contested, multi-candidate race. Memberships sold in 338 of 343 federal ridings. Support from every province and territory. 70.6% of eligible members voted. The most money ever raised in an NDP leadership campaign, from more than 11,000 individual donors. Left-populist, eco-socialist politics won the members over, and won it decisively.
The race was better for the other candidates being in it. Heather MacPherson is a formidable MP whose presence in the contest raised the floor for what winning it had to address. Tanille Johnston ran an impressively capable campaign — she far exceeded what a media class that had written her off was expecting to see. Both made this a fight worth winning, and both make the party stronger going forward.
I'm closing the campaign out through September 2026 — Elections Canada compliance on one side of the desk, and on the other, the harder work of translating what the campaign proved into the party's ongoing organizing. Big organizing works. The party has real repair to do from a 2025 federal result we inherited and did not cause.
This site is where I think in public about what comes next. Three threads I keep pulling on:
- Durable political infrastructure — the version of political work that outlasts a campaign cycle. What movement organizations, parties, and labour bodies need to keep knowledge and capacity from evaporating every time the tools change.
- Technology held to human terms — practising technology seriously in a techno-feudal moment. The vendors sell naïve optimism; the reflexive left sells blanket refusal. Both things are true: the dependency on hyperscaler infrastructure is real, and so is the need to do the work well anyway.
- Craft over career — political operations as a craft in service of a movement, not a career path in service of the profession.
Alongside the political work, I'm winding down Sword Fern Digital — a small practice that has delivered operational leadership and digital work for progressive campaigns and small organizations in Canada. Through 2026, I'm completing existing commitments rather than taking new ones.
If something here speaks to work you're doing, I'd like to hear from you.