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    When Your Sustainability Challenge Has No Playbook

    Leading organizations turn to Apex Catalytic to solve sustainability challenges that demand deep technical expertise, cross-domain pattern recognition, and next-level agility.

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  • The Apex Catalytic Difference

    Why the world's leading organizations choose us to help solve their toughest sustainability problems

    Multi-Domain Pattern Recognition

    Unlike generalist advisory firms, with Apex Catalytic, you get 20+ years of our lived experiences as leading researchers, impact investors, practicing engineers, AI experts, and executives. This unique cross-domain expertise identifies solutions that are often missed.

    Novel Problems Only

    All of our engagements focus on navigating and tackling unprecedented sustainability challenges. We are deliberately engineered for innovation. No templates, no rehashed solutions - just original thinking applied to the unique problems our partners face.

    Rapid Execution

    We have a long track record of rapid project execution for our partners, by design. Our depth and breadth of experience let us quickly size up new challenges, and our low-friction operating model gives us the freedom to explore the white space and deliver aligned solutions to our partners at breakneck pace.

  • Service Areas for Frontier Challenges

    We richly and effectively support people at large corporations, impact investment funds, and growth startups in three ways: Project-Based Engagement, Access-Based Advisory, or with our Impact Ignition Workshops.

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    Enabling Sustainable Outcomes with Tech, Data, and AI

    Helping organizations assess, deploy or incorporate AI applications, ESG software, or other new technologies to achieve desired environmental, economic, and social impacts.

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    Supporting Investment Funds

    Leading operational and technical due diligence for impact investment funds, creating effective investment strategies, navigating regulatory and impact-focused frameworks, and leveraging AI and digital tools to enhance operational capabilities and rigor.

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    Accelerating the Circular Economy

    Building and scaling circular supply chains for large corporations, developing effective circular product or technology strategies in EPR and non-EPR localities, and aligning circular economy-focused startups with market needs and opportunities.

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    Delivering Effective Research Research & Development

    Delivering a range of advanced R&D driving completely new sustainable products and innovations, developing pilots that actually scale, and incorporating effective tactics to scale adoption and impact.

  • A New Way to Workshop

    Impact Ignition is our proprietary tech-enabled workshop model that delivers 20x more insights and increases equity of participation by 50% compared to traditional workshops. We have three different models based on your group's makeup and goals: Brainstorming, Strategic Alignment, and Surveys/Feedback.

  • Our Multi-Domain Perspective is Your Competitive Advantage

    Jon Powell, PhD is the CEO and Founder of Apex Catalytic, and he doesn't just advise on sustainability challenges - he's lived every angle of it. As a practicing engineer, he's executed hundreds of complex projects hands-on. As a Yale PhD researcher, he pioneered new sustainability and circularity frameworks. As co-head of a $300M impact investment fund, he made high-stakes investment decisions. As an executive at Salesforce, he guided, enabled, and built tooling for 200+ of the world's largest companies on their toughest sustainability problems.

    Why Our Cross-Domain Experience Matters: We see connections that traditional consultants miss. Our research background allows us to rapidly interrogate complex ideas and technologies, figure out what holds up under scrutiny, and connect these things back to the sustainability outcomes that matter for our partners, at scale. Our investment fund leadership means we can separate viable businesses and technologies from science projects. Our tech leadership allows us to build or align data, digital technologies, hard tech, and AI in responsible ways toward sustainable outcomes. And our engineering roots ensure our recommendations are executable and will hold up in the real world.

    Our Key Credentials:

    • Co-Founder and Former Head of Global Sustainability Practice | Salesforce
    • Co-Head, Closed Loop Infrastructure Fund | Closed Loop Partners
    • Researcher and Author of 20+ Peer-Reviewed Scientific Publications | Yale University
    • Multiple-Time Founder
    • Work featured on NPR, NY Times, Associated Press, and many others

    Our Mission: To enable 10,000 sustainability professionals by 2030 through our project work, Impact Ignition Workshops, and other speaking and knowledge transfer engagements.

  • Have a Frontier Challenge?

    We are highly selective - declining far more engagement opportunities than we accept. But if you're facing a sustainability problem with no clear way forward, we want to hear about it.

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