Meet the team

Rooted in Place was founded by Tom, Mike, and Emma to help support communities to take on assets and land. They bring deep sector understanding alongside practical delivery experience in making assets work for local people while enabling Community Wealth Building

Tom Carman

Tom is a practitioner and systems thinker working at the intersection of community empowerment, land stewardship and organisational development. Over the past decade, he has supported communities, landowners and partners to plan projects, build strong governance, understand their finances and take on land or assets with confidence. His work focuses on helping groups move steadily from early ideas to long-term resilience.

Before co-founding Rooted in Place, Tom held senior roles at Common Nature, Shared Assets and Ethex, where he supported a wide range of community-led organisations to develop business plans, financial models and investment-ready proposals. He helped enterprises raise over £20m in community investment and worked closely with funders, councils and landowners to design practical pathways for community stewardship.

Tom brings a relational, curious and pragmatic approach, shaped by his experience across strategy, governance design, facilitation, blended finance and programme leadership. He has contributed to national programmes and research across community land, food systems, local economic resilience and organisational capacity building - including work with DEFRA, Natural England, local authorities, social enterprises and community land trusts.

He is committed to supporting clarity in complex situations and building the foundations needed for strong, locally rooted stewardship. Tom lives in Oxford with his family.

Emma Burnett

Dr Emma Burnett is an experienced researcher and writer, with deep knowledge and experience in food and farming. She has worked with various organisations on environmental sustainability and resilience-building, mapping regional production, and developing best practices for regenerative agriculture systems.

Prior to co-founding Rooted in Place, Emma was a researcher at Fielden Whisky, where she worked on the environmental and economic sustainability of grain production for distilling. Over the past 15 years, she has worked with a range of local food enterprises, with the University of Oxford, and co-founded Cultivate, a cooperative social enterprise that worked to produce and distribute locally-produced food within Oxfordshire, and to help increase community involvement in food-related issues and solutions.

Emma has a PhD from the Centre for Agroecology, Water & Resilience, which focussed on self-organisation, competition, cooperation, and resilience in local agri-food systems. She also has an MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management from Oxford. She brings a range of soft skills, research methodologies, and a genuine curiosity to the table.