About Us
"Catalyzing the cosmic fire, we form new planets."
What we do
Our Brilliance Brings You Sparkle
Mavericks, mavens, and old codgers all benefit from our core cadre of consultants, many of whom bring more than twenty years in technical and strategic consulting. In addition to experience, Catalyst Northwest offers a distinct creative insight, a view with a difference. Not just the "Portland mystique," we bring integrated, grounded, inspired thinkers and makers to the task. Our brilliance brings you sparkle.
Architecting Agile
For development and organizations: Get fleet-footed in software, research, and management with standups, stories, backlogs, and scrum practices
Designing Experience
User experience: Optimize services and systems for users through experiential research, persona development, and information architecture
Regenerating Enterprise
Beyond sustainability, helping enterprises become biophilic and life-giving.
Catalyzing Innovation
Unleashing creative potential in staff and design teams using research-backed patterns from nature and bioculture.
If you have a key project or program you need to succeed, we have the expertise to design and manage it. We can also help you optimize your portfolio management process and increase the rigor and effectiveness of your project management methods.
Check out our portfolio of sample work and the description of our services. Read our clients' success stories. When on-time and on-budget are critical, when making a difference is your differentiator, contact us.
Fearless and Green Powered
We have worked in $80M contexts, and with sole proprietors. We tailor best practice processes to empower your team to succeed, whatever the size or need. We feature 100% green power and ecological sustainability practices in our work.
Visit the LinkedIn profile for one of our primary consultants to get a taste of our capabilities.
At the Hearth of Change
The NASA images of the Hearth Nebula (upper left) and the Heart and Soul Nebulae (below) reflect the focalizing hearth at which we gather to connect with the heart and soul of your endeavor.
NASA offers this about the Hearth Nebula: "The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Because of its prominence, cultures all around the world have given special significance to Orion. The Maya of Mesoamerica envision the lower portion of Orion, his belt and feet (the stars Saiph and Rigel), as being the hearthstones of creation, similar to the triangular three-stone hearth that is at the center of all traditional Maya homes. The Orion nebula, lying at the center of the triangle, is interpreted by the Maya as the cosmic fire of creation surrounded by smoke.
"This metaphor of a cosmic fire of creation is apt. The Orion nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas where vast numbers of new stars are being forged. It is one of the closest sites of star formation to Earth and therefore provides astronomers with the best view of stellar birth in action. Many other telescopes have been used to study the nebula in detail, finding wonders such as planet-forming disks forming around newly forming stars. WISE was an all-sky survey giving it the ability to see these sites of star formation in a larger context. This view spans more than six times the width of the full moon, covering a region nearly 100 light-years across. In it, we see the Orion nebula surrounded by large amounts of interstellar dust, colored green.
"Astronomers now realize that the Orion nebula is part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which also includes the Flame nebula. This complex in our Milky Way galaxy is actively making new stars. It is filled with dust warmed by the light of the new stars within, making the dust glow in infrared light."
Welcome to the regenerative warmth of the stellar hearth of Catalyst Northwest Consulting Group. Catalyzed by the source of cosmic fire, we form new planets.