May 2025 Catalyze Magazine

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Peter Cuneo
Thought Leader
Superhero Leadership

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Sidhant Gupta
Chief Technology Officer
CloudWerx

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Sergio de Cordova
Executive Chairman
PVBLIC Foundation

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Seth Jacobson
Climate Solutions Officer
Climate Resolve

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
“Global
May 2025
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Robert Reiss
Founder and CEO
The CEO Forum Group

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Melanie Torres
Organizing Manager
Pacoima Beautiful

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Mark Fitzgerald
Principal
KPMG

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Maria Loi
Celebrity Chef
Founder of The Loi Brand

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Mani Dasgupta
Growth CMO
IBM

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Lavanya Ravishankar
AI GTM
Google Cloud

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Kim Smith
Global Executive
Commvault

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Taylor Smith
Global Youth Ambassador
Ideagen Foundation

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Jeff Terry
VP, CSR & Sustainability
GAF

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Jay Sadiq
Founder & CEO
FortyGuard

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Han Lim
Chief Business Officer
DeepCure

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Gretchen O'Hara
Vice President, Worldwide Partners & Alliances
Splunk

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
George Kalyvas
Supreme Secretary
Son of Pericles

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
David Kelly
Chair
HOSA Board of Directors

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Ashleigh De La Torre
Vice President, Public Policy
Amazon

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Stacy Haller
President and CEO
BrightFocus

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Rawle Andrews Jr.
Executive Director
APA Foundation

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Nancy Lynn Keach
Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships
BrightFocus

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Maurizio Vecchione
Co-Founder
AdAstral

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Margaret Dritsas
Grand President
Daughters of Penelope

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Esteban Olivares
President & CEO
American Hellenic Institute

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Elena Saviolakis
Executive Director
Daughters of Penelope

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Angela Jones
Chief Development Officer
APAF

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Amy Porfiri
Managing Director
APAF

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Amit Shah
Founder
The BLAQ Group

B Y I D E A G E N
CATALYZE.
May 2025
“Global
Partnership
Summit”
PLUS
The APAF, &
Cutocin
Alex Goldberg
General Partner & Co-Founder
AdAstral Funds

TABLE OF CONTENTS
01
02
03
The Power of Listening: How Purpose-
Driven Partnerships Drive Success
With Gretchen O’Hara, VP of Worldwide Channels &
Alliances at Splunk
Amazon’s Sustainability Strategy
Ashleigh de la Torre: VP of Public Policy, Amazon and
George Sifakis
Lessons in "Superhero Leadership"
With Peter Cuneo & Robert Reiss
04
Harnessing AI and Strategic Partnerships: How KPMG
and IBM Are Shaping the Future of Technology and
Sustainability
With Mark Fitzgerald of KPMG & Mani Dasgupta of IBM
05
Empowering Future Leaders: Insights from
HOSA, Daughters of Penelope, & Sons of
Pericles
With Taylor Smith, David Kelly, George Kalyvas, &
Margaret Dritsas

TABLE OF CONTENTS
06
07
08
09
AdAstral’s Visionary Trio of Physics,
Entrepreneurship, and Global Innovation
With George Sifakis, Maurizio Vecchione and Alex
Goldberg
GAF: Extreme Heat on Communities, Places
and People - What We Can Do About It
With Jeff Terry of GAF, Jay Sadiq of FortyGuard, Seth
Jacobson of Climate Resolve, & Melanie Torres of
Pacoima Beautiful
Summer Discovery: Transformative Summer
Leadership & Global Education Partnerships
With Esteban Olivares & Amit Shah of Summer
Discovery, & Chris Musci of Parsons - The New School
Unlocking Immunology: DeepCure’s Mission to
Tackle Chronic Inflammation with Advanced
Drug Discovery
With American Hellenic Institute CEO & President Nick
Larigakis

The Power of Listening: How
Purpose-Driven Partnerships
Drive Success
With Gretchen O’Hara, VP of Worldwide Channels & Alliances at Splunk
Watch Gretchen’s interview here:
More from Splunk here:
Splunk
George Sifakis: What is a lesson that has
impacted the way you create partnerships?
What is the secret sauce for your methodology?
Gretchen O'Hara: I think it boils down to a
few simple things, but first is do you have
mutually aligned objectives and mutual
goals? We talk a lot about ethos and we talk
a lot about shared DNA, and partnerships
can even be very different types of
organizations and people, but if you have a
shared vision, there's an opportunity. Then,
it's about making sure you are listening and
ensuring you have a lot of humility in your
partnerships.
Partnerships, by nature, mean that you come
together; they're 50-50. But when you don't
recognize the other person's value, or you
don't have clarity on what each other brings
to the table, those partnerships can break
down. With active listening, leading with
humility, empathy, and making sure
organizations are aligned and
communicating on their shared vision, you
can see some of the strangest partnerships
come together, and they're incredibly
successful because they're purpose-driven
and people are very clear on the outcome of
what you want and what you want to
accomplish.
George: It's incredible to hear your vision on
that because what is a common theme is
partnerships and the fact that no one entity,
company, or even the UN can do it on their
own. That's the lesson here. You refer to the
power of listening, a term you coined, but
how is it strengthened relationships for
Cisco/Splunk and why is that so powerful?
Gretchen: I think when you are heard and
you feel that your problems, what you're
trying to accomplish, and your business
outcomes are heard, there's an immediate
trust that's built. That's with the partnerships
that I build across the world, and it's with
our customers that we serve because they're
partners, too. They're customers, but they're
also partners.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 1

The Power of Listening: How Purpose-Driven
Partnerships Drive Success
Gretchen: If you reframe everything in terms of partnerships that you can mutually benefit
from, that power of listening, in my opinion, helps us accomplish those goals faster because
we are actually coming to the table and understanding what we're trying to get done
together. It leads back to my passion for sustainability and an equitable future, which Cisco
and Splunk believe in as well. Leading Splunk ERG as the accountable executive there for
the women's ERG, one of the things I think is so important is that you have diverse
perspectives.
You have to have a diverse perspective, and if you don't incorporate the power of listening,
you don't have other perspectives. When you have a diverse perspective of thought, the
innovation opportunity, the creation for us to be able to get things done in my corporate
life and my private life, and what we're trying to do here globally, is unstoppable. So,
listening is an important value that we practice.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 2

Ideagen Global Partnerships Summit
2 0 2 4 G L O B A L P A R T N E R S H I P S U M M I T
Ashleigh de la Torre: VP of Public
Policy, Amazon:
Ashleigh De La Torre on
Amazon’s Sustainability
Strategy
George Sifakis: And so public policy: it's a critical area, and you're playing a role in shaping
this at Amazon as it relates to sustainability initiatives. What role do you see public policy
playing, and how can we advance these goals through public policy?
Ashleigh de la Torre: I like to think that public policy is one of the levers that will help us get
towards net zero carbon, and we have a great amount of work ahead of us in order to do that.
We'll need government partnerships, public-private partnerships, and policies that encourage
companies to unlock their capabilities and pursue things like low carbon fuel standards or
investing in electric vehicles in order to get there. So, what I'd like to do is share a little bit
about the partnership that we've had with the government and some of the policies that we
think are most impactful.
First, we joined the First Movers Coalition, which is a partnership with the State Department
and the World Economic Forum that is bringing companies together to make bold
commitments to addressing hard-to-abate sectors. So things like transportation, aviation,
cement, maritime shipping... That's one of the commitments we've made as far as finding and
reducing shipping emissions. The other way we've partnered with the government is through
the Department of Energy and their new hydrogen hubs. We're a partner in two of those hubs in
order to find and scale green hydrogen. Beyond those partnerships, which are super important,
we also spend time doing what I like to call 'shoe leather lobbying.' Meeting with Congress,
meeting at the federal level and the state level, to talk about policies that we think provide
tailwinds to help companies invest in reducing their carbon emissions.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 3

A M A Z O N ’ S S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y
S T R A T E G Y
Ashleigh: As I mentioned, we're strong supporters of low-carbon fuel standards. In our
headquarters state, Washington, we were proud to support a low-carbon fuel standard that's now
being put into place. We're looking at other states, like New Mexico, to find and scale
sustainable aviation fuel. At this point, aviation fuel is not available at scale, so how are we
pushing for incentives to help refiners bring down the cost of parity with traditional fuels so that
operators can add that into their network?
George: These are incredible examples, and I love how you started with your background and
then transitioned to how it applies to all of the other things that you're doing with respect to
public policy and the old-school shoe leather tactics. Meeting people in person and helping to
describe what the issues are is so important, even today, with all of the technology that we talk
about. It's ironic, but it's still an important component to helping describe issues so articulately,
as you have today on all of the things that Amazon is doing. Now: environmental impact of
packaging. What are some examples of policies that you're implementing with respect to that?
Ashleigh: I often think that Amazon is many things. We're a cloud provider, we have grocery
stores, we now offer Amazon Pharmacy, we broadcast Thursday Night Football, but primarily
we are a retailer. That's where a lot of consumers and customers engage with us, and the
tangible part of that is the package that shows up on their doorstep. It is imperative that we,
number one: make sure your package arrives in pristine condition and that the contents are safe
and protected as you would expect. But next, what are we doing to reduce the plastic, the
overall weight, and I can say we've made progress across so many fronts. We've taken steps to
reduce the overall weight of each shipment by a significant factor so that we're shipping a
package itself that weighs less. That helps us improve truck fill rates and helps bring down
emissions from the packaging itself. We're cutting down on the number of boxes we put in
additional boxes, and we call that ship in product packaging.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 4

A M A Z O N ’ S S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y
S T R A T E G Y
Ashleigh: If you order a box of diapers, we no longer put another box on top of that box, we put
the label directly on the package because our engineers have tested it to know that it's going to
arrive on your doorstep just fine. You don't need that extra packaging. We've made our
packaging curbside recyclable, and we've also reduced the amount of plastic in our packaging.
Last year, we're proud to announce we have two fulfillment centers now that are completely
plastic free, so any of the packaging that comes through, there strictly paper and recyclable.
Then, what I hope you've all noticed, we've reduced the number of plastic air pillows used inside
the packaging to protect your goods by 95%. in favor of paper dunnage to protect your order. By
the end of the year it will be zero, so no more plastic air pillows. This is a huge task that sounds
easy; it's not. But we believe if a company the size and scale of Amazon can do it, others can
too.
We have a lot of proprietary information we've developed throughout this decarbonization
journey, and we realized we needed to be better about sharing that with everyone. Sharing not
just with our partners in the Climate Pledge but also with any company that's looking for ways to
decarbonize. We recently started the Amazon Sustainability Exchange, and there, all of this
information is available. I encourage you to check it out so you can take some of the lessons
we've learned and find ways to put them into whatever type of industry you're in.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 4

Learn more about how the APAF
can help here:
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 5

IDEAGEN GLOBAL 2024 GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP 6
SUMMIT
Lessons in "Superhero Leadership"
With Peter Cuneo & Robert Reiss:
Robert Reiss: Let's get to the core
of this: when you are in a
challenging situation and you have
to make a decision, walk us through
what goes through your mind.
Because you've had the honor of
turning around seven great
organizations, and this interview is
really about CEO wisdom and how
a leader thinks, talk about one
situation you were in, what was
going through your mind, and how
you made your decision.
Peter Cuneo: First off, in all the
turnarounds I've done, the biggest
single problem was past leadership.
I like to say that the culture of the
organization was bankrupt. The
company may not have been
financially bankrupt, but the culture
was completely wrong. And for
anyone in this room, all you would
have needed, as I needed, was two
weeks on the job to start to sense
what was wrong. I may not have
figured it all out, but I got a good
sense of what was wrong. I was
always very committed to rewriting
the culture of these
organizations, the value systems,
how people dealt with each other,
how they dealt with customers, and
how they dealt with their
colleagues.
Peter: What did the company
consider to be important? If you go
to a consumer product company
and 25% of the sales every year
have to be new products, and no
one wants to go in new products
because they've had a bunch of
failures, that's a cultural problem.
You want your best people in new
products.
Marketing, sales, production,
quality control, and on and on; you
want your best there, but they don't
want to go there because the
culture is backward. They had
some mistakes and past leadership
fired a bunch of people. All
companies have missed. The
greatest companies in the world
have missed on new products; it's
the nature of the beast.
Robert: When you took over
Marvel, it was really bankrupt.
They only had $3 million cash,
very little, and they didn't have real
estate or anything. It was a stock
trading at $0.96 a share. Your back
was up against the wall, which is
where people usually find
themselves, and that's where the
greatest ideas come from. What
went through your mind when you
started thinking, 'Well, we happen
to have all these IP characters, but
they've been dormant for three
decades.' What went through your
mind there? Did you read
something? Did you speak with
someone? Was it your board?
How did you come up with the
idea to make movies?
Peter: Well, I can't take credit for
making movies. The first film,
which was X-Men, which came out
in 2000, was already filming when I
showed up. So, I cannot take credit
for getting into film, and frankly, if
any of you had been there and
looked at these characters and the
potential to create franchises, you
would have been on board. No
doubt about it.

How Student Leaders Can Mobilize Their Peers to
Achieve the UN SDGs
Peter: You always need good people, but I would say
the culture at Marvel, because of the bankruptcy and
other past issues with leadership, was way too
conservative. This is a company that should be the
opposite of conservative.
Robert: Everyone was trying to save money on
paperclips, on everything, right?
Peter: It was so wrong on many levels. People ask me,
'Why was Marvel so successful?' We went from
bankruptcy to selling the business to Disney ten years
later for $4.5 billion. How did we do that? They expect
me to say, 'We made great movies.' We did make very
good movies, but that wasn't the reason. 'Oh, we had
great comic books.' Yes, they weren't when I showed
up, but that wasn't the reason.
Peter: If you're casting your first adventure movie with
a lot of characters in it, you should cast Tom Cruise as
one of the main characters and so on, but we wouldn't
do it, and we did this in all our movies. Spider-Man
was similar. Nobody really knew Tobey Maguire
prior, but he was the perfect casting.
That's one example of changing the rules of the game,
but we also started our own studio in 2005, Marvel
Studios. Prior to that, we were working with big
studios as partners, and no one believed we could be
successful. How could we possibly make movies better
than big studios? Well, the rest is history because we
did it, and we did it all differently.
It was the culture, and the culture was the following.
We are going to change the rules of the game. We are
not going to make movies the way the big Hollywood
studios do. We're not going to publish comics the way
the other competitors do. We're going to change the
rules of the game, and Hollywood was very upset with
us because, in many cases, we just wouldn't play the
game.
Here's an example: Hollywood would like all the
major characters and castings to be well-known, highpriced
actors and actresses. We felt that, actually, all
we wanted was great actors and actresses and that the
heroes, who were behind a mask most of the time
anyway, were the ones that were going to make the
movie. At that time, Hollywood had a phrase, and they
still do a little of this that so and so will make your
movie; you just have to cast them. That is totally
ridiculous, but that was part of the Hollywood culture.

Global Partnerships Summit
Harnessing AI and
Strategic Partnerships:
How KPMG and IBM Are
Shaping the Future of
Technology and
Sustainability
With Mark Fitzgerald of
KPMG & Mani Dasgupta
of IBM
Watch the interview here:
More from New York here:
Ideagen
George Sifakis: What is it that's happening between this partnership with KPMG and IBM?
What is it that makes it so powerful?
Mani Dasgupta: You know, we both are over 100-year-old organizations, so between the two
companies, there's a long legacy of trusted relationships with our clients. We are very
complementary in the trust and the brand that both of the companies command with our clients,
but there are complementary capabilities in IBM's technology and research, and KPMG's audit
capabilities as well. If we can truly understand the dynamics of a large global organization, what
goes into it from a process standpoint and a regulatory standpoint, then advise it on how to work
smarter with technology, with less footprint on the environment, and figure out how to do more
with less leading to profits, it's a win-win-win for all.
Mark Fitzgerald: That was pitch-perfect, so I'm not going to repeat that, but let me zoom out to
put things into context. This week, George, you've already mentioned there are about 700 plus
events around UNGA. We've got "Summit of the Future," we've got the World Economic
Forum, we have Climate Week. There's a variety of things happening in New York this week, but
I want to pick up on a couple of key themes that I've heard that will really tie in with what we've
just heard in terms of how our two companies work together.
If you take SDG 17, which literally is focused on partnerships, there are two crucial elements:
data and technology. There are many others, but I want to highlight those two first. One of the
key themes this week is all about the impact, maybe good, maybe not, maybe perilous, maybe
not around AI. This is clearly an area that KPMG and IBM work closely on and are heavily
invested in, as most companies of our nature are.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 8

Harnessing AI and Strategic Partnerships: How KPMG and IBM Are
Shaping the Future of Technology and Sustainability
Mark: However, the issue I'm picking up on as a theme this week is not so much trying to create
barriers for what could potentially do as a peril, but how do we create an opportunity while also
concurrently dealing with those clear issues? A couple of issues we have to be very clear about:
One, AI will only really present the rewards and the positivity and benefits if you have data to
use of scale. To create that data at scale, you're going to create a carbon footprint that is
multiples of what we see today. You cannot create the data centers without also having a
concurrent conversation around the generation of electricity. We need to be pragmatic on this,
and it's not one or the other; it's both at the same time.
Very often, our clients identify as both an energy company and a data center company. Where we
can come in is advising our clients and how they use tools like Watson and others to make that a
more efficient proposition. How you look at it in terms of the baseline insights that you can
provide, in my case, to governments, that's where you can start to generate the power of AI.
That's what I'm hearing from world leaders this week; you've got to have both. You can't just
sugarcoat the positivity without understanding the challenges of AI.
Mani: To give a very pragmatic, simple example of how it could be done, we'll use data centers.
The amount of power that our data centers consume is just enormous, and everybody says, 'Go
to cloud," but the cloud runs on someone's data center somewhere. Now, you're looking at all of
this technology and infrastructure required to keep these centers running, but some elements
don't need to run at all points of time. IBM has software called 'Turbonomic' that can go in and
find these zombie servers that don't need to be running and shut them off. How simple is that?
Switch it off and save some power. Technology can overcome a lot of the challenges that
companies are facing and even save them money. In the end, you're saving power, and you're
saving money. It's a win-win.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 9

Harnessing AI and Strategic Partnerships: How KPMG and IBM Are
Shaping the Future of Technology and Sustainability
Mark: You're going to have practical solutions like that to generate the power, create the
data, and then put the tools on top to get the insights, but let me give you a quick example
of something I heard that was noteworthy. I was at an event yesterday, and the New York
Commissioner for Health was presenting. He said a child born today in the Upper East Side
has a life expectancy of 11 years more than [Fill in the Blank?]. Now, you'd probably guess
some emerging market, but no, in Brownsville, New York City, there is an 11-year gap in
life expectancy today.
So his premise was how can we create more timely and targeted insights using AI in a way
that will promote the partnership of all actors, in this case, healthcare, to work better so
they use more of what they have more efficiently? Most of our clients reflect that. They
come to us to be able to provide those basic insights to start with, but then the use of those
insights becomes the critical output, and that's where we partner together.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 9

IDEAGEN GLOBAL 2024 GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS SUMMIT 10
Empowering Future Leaders: Insights from HOSA,
Daughters of Penelope, & Sons of Pericles
Taylor Smith, David Kelly, George Kalyvas, & Margaret Dritsas
Taylor Smith: What is one key
aspect of your organization that
differentiates it from others?
George Kalyvas: As a fraternal
organization, certain stereotypes
come with that, but we are not an
animal house-type of organization.
We're a Hellenic community
organization, and that is something
that our members turn to us for.
They turn to us for professional
development, and we provide them
the tools to network with industry
professionals, form lifelong
friendships, attend our various Greek
social weekends, and participate in
their local communities. Compared
to other organizations in the same
field, we don't solely prioritize the
social. It's very important for our
members to get involved in the
community.
Margaret Dritsas: For us at the
Daughters of Penelope, we're the
women's organization of this big
AHEPA family, and, as George said, our
organization is based on Hellenic values
such as philanthropy, community service,
individual excellence, and education.
We're very big on education, and what
we like to see ourselves as is the bridge
between the past to the future by
supporting our youth
It's very important for our youth members
to be a part of everything we do so they
feel included, and so we can help them
with mentorship. We might not be the
right person for their career path or career
development, but we know somebody
who will be. Helping them get to where
they can shine and their potential can be
seen through networking is crucial.
Taylor: All of your work requires
partnerships throughout many aspects.
Could you go into one key partnership
that your organization has created that has
helped make a lasting impact?
David: HOSA lives in the local
classroom, and if you are a teacher or a
student with limited resources, it can be
really hard to make your voice heard,
especially in the health industry.
What we try to do on an international
level is engage partners who are hungry
to connect with those very passionate,
dedicated students and to leverage those
partnerships to get students involved in
their local health community. One recent
example is we've partnered with BioRab,
a large biotechnology company. When
you think about a career that must be
opaque to a middle schooler or high
schooler, biotechnology comes first to
mind.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 11

Breaking Down Barriers to Achieve SDG 4 on Quality
Education
David: But through our partnership, they sponsor one of our competitive events, and so that gets their high-quality,
industry-quality materials to students in classrooms around the country and around the world. When they exhibit at
our conferences, and they exhibit in a very engaging, interactive way, they're identifying students who already have
a propensity towards biotechnology. They're being mobbed in our expo hall by students wanting to learn more, and
HOSA has been able to serve as that touchstone and that connection.
Margaret: For the Daughters of Penelope, we have many partnerships, but the ones that come to mind for me
right now are Meals on Wheels. As an organization, we have contributed over $70,000 to Meals on Wheels.
Another partner of ours is Water By Women. This program helps women get clean water in places both in the US
and abroad. The way it works is one woman will give a covenant to provide another three families with clean water
and a filtration system, and with every family, you're saving at least four lives from diseases that would come from
contaminated water. Those are the two ones that I can think of right now, but we have so many partnerships with
so many organizations within the health and education sectors.
George: As an international organization with local chapters, we really advocate for our members and our chapters
to find grassroots community organizations on their own and on an international level to craft the overall message
of our priorities. For example, mental health is a really huge one for us. It's something that our members are always
asking how to get involved in and contribute to solving this crisis.
A few years ago, we partnered with the Jed Foundation, which works towards alleviating mental health illnesses
and bullying and harassment in the youth, and we also worked with the Boys and Girls Club of America, which
has chapters across North America, this past year. We want to be the steering voice for the rest of our chapters. If
they want to partner with an organization that our board has chosen, by all means, but we also want them to get
involved in their communities and find issues, and then solve them.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 11

CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 12

AdAstral’s Visionary Trio of Physics,
Entrepreneurship, and Global Innovation
With George Sifakis, Maurizio Vecchione and Alex Goldberg
Watch the interview here:
View the entire Summit here
Ideagen
George Sifakis: Maurizio, what was the original inspiration for founding AdAstral? What was
that moment when you said, "I need to do this," and why?
Maurizio Vecchione: Well, as you know, I got to spend a little bit of time thinking about issues
of innovation, partnership, and collaboration for impact with my prior boss, Bill Gates, and
together we launched something at the time that was called Global Good. This was an
attempt to create private capital in partnership with industry and the research community, to
advance humankind to tackle the problems that would be difficult to tackle at the government
level or the private investor level, but doing it in a way that attempted to federate the power of
the private sector.
That was a 10-year journey where we learned a lot of things, and there was even an Ideagen
Global event that we hosted in Seattle. Some of the faces here are familiar from that journey,
and that journey was quite successful. We ended up creating 400 companies that had some
fairly disruptive impact in respective sectors, leading right into the pandemic. One of our big
success stories was Moderna and bringing mRNA vaccines into the fold, but big
philanthropy, especially within the Gates ecosystem, had limitations—not in terms of dollars
but in terms of what it could do.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 13

AdAstral’s Visionary Trio of Physics,
Entrepreneurship, and Global Innovation
Maurizio: As I finished my project at Global Good and went on my own, I asked Bill for
support in creating a new version of the same idea. I give credit to Bill for the idea, but the
implementation that Alex and I are bringing forth now with this new fund called AdAstral is a
little bit different.
First of all, we're looking at problems that are not necessarily for low- and middle-income
countries. If you look at the evolution of the global community, there's more wealth now
outside of the West than in the West. For example, suppose you look at the global burden of
disease: the last time I addressed your group. I told you that the diseases killing people in lowand
middle-income countries are different from diseases that are affecting us, but that has
changed. We're all pretty much suffering from the same things now, and climate is a great
equalizer. The effects and impacts of climate are cutting across geography.
With AdAstral, we're trying to do the same thing—bring private capital and corporate
involvement around the idea that innovation can provide a solution to some of these critical
problems. Then, we're partnering with the nonprofit world as well as the government to drive
those ideas forward. It's this sort of private capital, for-profit capital, married with nonprofit
capital for an impact-driven environment, but we're doing it around problems that we think
are global and not necessarily narrowly defined around specific geographies.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 14

AdAstral’s Visionary Trio of Physics, Entrepreneurship, and
Global Innovation
Alex Goldberg: To add to that from a for-profit perspective, since that's as much of an anchor
for what we're doing as anything, is the unification of our backgrounds. Maurizio is a brilliant
physicist and innovation leader who has led a 600-person group of scientists in the Gates
ecosystem and now has interdisciplinary work in a variety of disciplines.
My background is as a serial entrepreneur for a series of tech companies, several of them
having multi-billion-dollar exits, and, as a VC, I view this as helping the world, improving the
strategic development goals, and thinking about impact as good business. During the
pandemic, I was very interested in doing something that had a measurable impact on the
world and could help global health. I also, using my entrepreneurial nose, was sensing that
while AI was beginning to crest, there was going to be an interesting verticalization of AI.
That began to happen in areas of science, technology, medicine, and research. And so, with
the friendship that we previously had, I called Maurizio, and we basically discussed creating
an outside moonshot factory at AdAstral. We very much believe it's a great deployment of
capital, a great investment. In each of these areas of innovation that Maurizio has mentioned,
he has his fingers in so many different research labs, and his unique ability—I sort of jokingly
say as an Italian chef—to draw upon the ingredients and the laboratories and the IP from a
variety of sources, has provided us with several unfair advantages to spin out companies that
are for-profit but very much also have this impact in mind, and they're very blended in their
objectives.
In this chapter of my career, my focus has been on problems with impact, problems with
global health scale, and problems with climate, but which, in a unified fashion, have huge
financial return potential as well, and that's why we created AdAstral.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 15

GAF: Extreme Heat on
Communities, Places and People -
What We Can Do About It
With Jeff Terry of GAF, Jay Sadiq of FortyGuard, Seth Jacobson of
Climate Resolve, & Melanie Torres of Pacoima Beautiful
Watch the interview here:
View the entire Summit here
Ideagen
Jeff Terry: One of the arguments Seth and I always have together - along with Climate
Resolve, GAF, and our partners—is that there are not enough resources being allocated to
address extreme heat, especially targeted at the urban heat island effect. The information and
knowledge increasingly available to prioritize the places where work needs to be done,
whether that’s on mitigation or adaptation, is critical. I’d love your perspective on both of
those, Seth. Do you want to start?
Seth Jacobson: Sure. We’re very fortunate to live and work in California, which is not only
politically progressive but also generally very prosperous. However, we are currently facing a
$50 billion budget deficit, which is requiring some changes to our policies and funding.
Despite that, California has been able to fund a great deal of data collection. The state
created something called CalEnviroScreen, which looks at census-tract-level data for various
factors and generates scores to prioritize the funding communities receive. They are also
developing a CalHeat score, which I think will be integrated into the CalEnviroScreen tool.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 17

GAF: Extreme Heat on Communities, Places
and People - What We Can Do About It
Seth: We, along with state agencies and utilities, use these tools to allocate funding. Melanie was saying
her organization works with community members to teach them how to use these tools as well. To
answer your question, we need to push this knowledge to communities so that they have the agency to
act. I’ll turn it over to Melanie to speak to that.
Melanie Torres: Yeah. A great example of the partnership between Pacoima Beautiful, Climate
Resolve, and GAF is the Cool Communities Project. This project essentially coated 10 blocks—
18 square blocks, to be precise—of community streets with cooling pavement. This pavement
reflects solar energy back into space, resulting in cooler temperatures for the community. On
extreme heat days, the surface temperature is about 3.5 degrees cooler.
We didn’t just apply this to streets; we also included an elementary school rooftop and parking
lots. We’ve received a lot of great feedback. My role in this project focused on ensuring that
community members understood what was being invested in their community. It wasn’t just a
street project; it was about educating them on the effects of extreme heat, how it feels in the
body, and how they can mitigate hazards and risks when facing extreme heat.
As Seth mentioned, we use CalEnviroScreen and other tools, making sure that every project and
all information is digestible for our community members. This ensures they are aware of what
we’re doing and how we’re advocating for more resources for our community.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 18

GAF: Extreme Heat on Communities, Places
and People - What We Can Do About It
Jeff: Anything you’d like to add, Jay?
Jay Sadiq: Just to echo what’s already been said, you can’t solve urban heat by just taking a
picture of the city. You need an “MRI.” At Furegard, we’re thinking about how we can collect
urban heat data all the time, everywhere. We’re exploring how to use machine learning and AI
to deliver effective solutions for cooler communities.
For example, we’ve had successful projects in the Middle East, where Furegard started, and in
Dubai. There, our data helped engineers not only identify urban hotspots but also implement
effective solutions—choosing the right materials for the ground, incorporating shade,
optimizing building orientation, selecting appropriate plants, and using water bodies
strategically. Combining these elements reduced temperatures by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius.
That’s why I call it an MRI—it brings together all these elements to create a comprehensive
solution. These are data-driven solutions that don’t require an increased budget; they just help
you make more effective decisions on the ground.
What I’m obsessed with is bringing temperature solutions and intelligence to everyone’s
fingertips. For instance, how can everyone in this room take a cooler walking route instead of
just a shorter one? How can they find properties to buy or rent based on microclimate
conditions? How can this integrate into tools like an Apple Watch or health applications to
protect vulnerable groups like seniors and children?
Urban heat is a personal issue for me; it almost took my life when I was growing up. So I want
to deliver impactful solutions that people can easily access because this affects everyone. For me,
it’s a data problem, and my challenge is figuring out how to bring this intelligence to everyone.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 19

Summer Discovery: Transformative Summer
Leadership & Global Education Partnerships
With Esteban Olivares & Amit Shah of Summer Discovery, & Chris
Musci of Parsons - The New School
Watch the Interview Here:
More from New York Here:
Ideagen
Esteban Olivares: A lot of times, we're asked, what does Summer Discovery do in these, what
we call, managed service partnerships? We help the university, organization, or corporation
develop the pre-college program. But a lot of what we do allows you to laser focus on what
you do best—building those scholarships, marketing enrollment, and making sure the
families know what to do and how to do it before they come to campus. Once they get to
campus, we take care of all the rest, ensuring we have 24/7 supervision, holistic student
development, and synchronicity. We work together to make sure that there's a great program
for the students at the end so that they become those future leaders who will say that
program had an impact. So thank you, Chris.
Chris Musci: I think that's very important because, you know, when you're working with
college students who can advocate for themselves, you're usually just working with one
person. But we work with the student, their parents, and sometimes their grandparents, and
it's really great to have a team that can address issues that could be anywhere from academic
concerns to just their living experience in New York City. We really have to make sure that
we want our students to be fearless, but we also want to create a safety net so they can
explore their creativity in New York, feel safe, and give their parents peace of mind as well.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 21

Summer Discovery: Transformative Summer Leadership &
Global Education Partnerships
Esteban: Ahmed, partnerships, cross-sector corporations—what does this mean to what you do
and what's happening at Summer Discovery?
Amit Shah: The short of it is, we have great university partners, and we have great families that
we collaborate and partner with. A lot of the conversation that happened today were about how
we think about change for the future and how we impact change for generations. It really starts
with the youth—being able to show youth the impact they can have, what careers they could
follow, and giving them an inside view of these different companies, how they work, and what
different paths in their career could look like. It really gives them a life-changing experience.
Our goal is to make sure that we play a small role in developing that with youth. They say it
takes a village to raise a child—it takes even more to develop them into someone who's going to
be an industry game-changer; someone who can motivate, inspire, and drive impact. It’s really
about being that conduit for when there's an idea.
Esteban: How do we bring that idea to life? How do we bring that vision to action? Years ago,
Ideagen and Summer Discovery talked, and we asked, "How do we bring this Ideagen
experience into a summer program for students?" And now we have a Future Global Leaders
program that runs at Georgetown University. I believe there were about two sessions—40
students or so across two sessions last year—but this has been, I think, the fourth summer that
we've been running this program. It's been an amazing opportunity to work with Ideagen,
develop that program, and bring that vision to life.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 22

Summer Discovery: Transformative Summer Leadership &
Global Education Partnerships
Esteban: Chris, can you talk a little bit about how the summer programs—courses, fashion,
architecture, and design—impact the development of our future leaders?
Chris Musci: First of all, we want to reflect the pedagogy of the undergraduate and graduate
programs. Parsons greatly values sustainability, social justice, equity, and inclusion. All of our
learning is project-based. We want to be very contemporary and even on the cutting edge in
terms of how our faculty presents courses. For example, in fashion, there's a huge emphasis on
upcycling. Our students go out to visit FabScrap, where they purchase fabric that is reclaimed
from the industry. Their project prompts aren't about making the most beautiful dress; instead,
they address important issues in the world, even at the smallest of levels.
We want our students to design while reflecting on how they feel about world issues and their
responsibilities because they have a lot ahead of them. Our faculty also bring in objectives that
are important to them. For example, in our School of Constructed Environments, our students
aren't allowed to use foam core or certain adhesives to build models. Quite often, when our tote
bags and water bottles arrive for the students, we break down the boxes and save them for
model building.
We have to be very laser-focused on what's happening in the industry now. All of our courses
are both analog and digital, so a student will be designing, draping, and sewing with their laptop
out at the same time. We talk about zero waste in pattern making and really try to push their
thinking so that they have a different perspective on what will make them unique when they
apply to college and also what careers are available to them.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 22

U N L O C K I N G I M M U N O L O G Y :
D E E P C U R E ’ S M I S S I O N T O
T A C K L E C H R O N I C
I N F L A M M A T I O N W I T H
A D V A N C E D D R U G D I S C O V E R Y
WITH DEEPCURE CEO, THRAS KARYDIS
DeepCure
Thras Karydis, CEO of DeepCure
George Sifakis: What is, in your opinion, the importance of immunology and inflammation,
and why is that driving you and DeepCure so quickly to attack this issue?
Thras Karydis: Great question, George. It's very close to our hearts, actually, and I've been
exposed to this throughout the past few years as part of being at DeepCure as an organization.
I've been astounded to find out that recent studies show that inflammation—and specifically
chronic, systemic inflammation—might be the underlying cause of almost any disease you can
imagine, like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and even neuroinflammation.
It’s such an unmet clinical need. We understand a lot of the biology behind it and the different
pieces of our immune system, which is highly complex. But it’s hard for us to design drugs for
it and figure out ways to modulate the disease because of all these intricacies. You can imagine
our immune system as being like a system with 1,000 different switches, and we need to flip
the right ones to stop the over-inflammatory response that has no reason to be there while still
preserving the proper immune response to, for example, a viral or bacterial infection.
For us, the challenge drives us, but it’s also an opportunity as a company that specializes in
solving hard chemistry problems. The therapeutic space for inflammation has focused so much
on biologics, like antibodies, which address part of the disease but have limitations—like
acquired resistance or the need for patients to get injections multiple times a month. There
hasn’t been much attention given to the small molecule space, largely because it’s very hard to
design these drugs.
You face challenges like two proteins coming together and forming protein-protein
interactions, which are notoriously difficult to target with a therapeutic. Or you encounter
fundamental scientific issues in designing chemical compounds that are both effective and safe.
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 23

Editor's Note
It's been an epic year for Ideagen Global as we come together to build
partnerships for scale.
We're witnessing remarkable trends, from groundbreaking advancements
in technology to inspiring AI progress. The world is evolving at a rapid
pace, with AI and virtual experiences becoming more accessible and
impactful.
The Best is Indeed Yet To Be!
GEORGE SIFAKIS
GEORGE SIFAKIS
Editor-in-Chief & CEO
-Ideagen
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 25
RYAN DRADDY
Publication Co-Editor
Pictured Top to Bottom
Phyllis Ferrell, DAC
The Daughters of Penelope
Jeff Terry, GAF