The Author
Gary Tomchuk
Venture Builder · Impact Strategist · Media Entrepreneur
Building enterprises that move transformational ideas into action.
For more than four decades, Gary has worked at the intersection of business, technology, media, sustainability and social change. From Activist to Catalyst grew out of that work and a lifelong exploration of the spiritual principles that shape lasting change.
Social Change Is in My DNA
My journey toward From Activist to Catalyst began long before I had words for activism, sustainability, systems change, or spiritual principles.
I grew up in New Jersey during the social upheaval of the 1960s. I remember watching the Newark race riots unfold on television and becoming aware, at a young age, of the deep divisions and inequalities within our society. Those images raised questions about justice, community, and social change that have stayed with me throughout my life.
Then came the first Earth Day in 1970. Inspired by the emerging environmental movement, I started a recycling program for my Boy Scout troop. It raised money for the troop while doing something tangible to protect the environment. It was a simple project, but it introduced me to an idea that would become central to much of my later work:
Change becomes possible when conviction is combined with practical action, good information, and workable solutions.
For my Eagle Scout project, I took that idea further. I conducted a sound-level study of the New Jersey Turnpike as it passed through my hometown. The data helped demonstrate the impact of highway noise on the surrounding community and contributed to the case for constructing what were among the early sound barriers along major freeways.
Two Paths Begin to Converge
When I entered Villanova University to study electrical engineering, I already knew what I wanted to do with it.
I wanted to develop solar and renewable energy systems. This was the 1970s, decades before renewable energy became the global industry it is today. To me, engineering offered a practical way to address environmental problems by creating solutions.
Something else happened at Villanova that would prove equally important. As part of the university's curriculum, I was required to take a course in world religions which became an opening into an entirely different way of understanding the world. I encountered spiritual traditions and wisdom teachings beyond those with which I had grown up and began what became a lifelong exploration of spirituality, philosophy, and the principles shared across many of the world's great wisdom traditions.
A Career at the Intersection of Business and Change
Over the next four decades, my work took me through entrepreneurship, natural products, renewable energy, health, technology, nonprofit leadership, and social impact.
Although the industries changed, the underlying interest remained remarkably consistent: finding ways to use business, technology, capital, communications, and entrepreneurship as forces for positive change.
I became involved in the emerging socially responsible business and investment movements, including working with futurist and sustainability pioneer Hazel Henderson, producing Ethical Markets TV, which explored new approaches to business, finance, sustainability, and social innovation.
My work in media led to another experiment in social change. Through AwareGuide and See the Change, I explored how transformational films could move people from awareness to engagement.
Throughout all of this work, two threads kept developing: changing systems and understanding consciousness.
Outward
How do we change technologies, businesses, institutions, and social systems?
Inward
How do we change ourselves—and how does who we are affect the change we create?
From Activist to Catalyst
Over time, I began questioning some of our assumptions about how social change happens.
Activism has accomplished extraordinary things. It has challenged injustice, changed laws, protected ecosystems, expanded rights, and brought issues into public consciousness that might otherwise have remained invisible.
But I also began to see its limitations. When movements become defined primarily by what they oppose, it is easy to reproduce the very patterns we hope to change: division, judgment, fear, anger, othering, and the conviction that the people on the other side are the problem.
Can we transform a system using the same consciousness that helped create it?
My exploration of spiritual traditions suggested another approach. Across religions, philosophies, Indigenous traditions, and wisdom teachings, remarkably similar principles appear again and again: interconnectedness, compassion, intention, stewardship, forgiveness, cause and effect, abundance, nonattachment, and the fundamental recognition of our relationship to one another and to the living world.
What would happen if we consciously applied those principles to social change? That question became the foundation of From Activist to Catalyst.
Creating the Change We Want to See
Becoming a catalyst does not mean abandoning activism.
It does not mean becoming passive in the face of injustice, avoiding conflict, or pretending that profound differences don't exist. It means expanding our understanding of what creates lasting change.
A catalyst still speaks truth. A catalyst still challenges destructive systems. A catalyst still acts. But a catalyst also asks different questions.
- How can I engage rather than simply oppose?
- How can I understand the system well enough to change the conditions producing the problem?
- How can I recognize the humanity of someone whose worldview is profoundly different from mine?
- How can I embody the principles I am asking society to embrace?
And perhaps most importantly: What am I helping to create?
More than fifty years separate the boy watching social upheaval on television, collecting recyclables on the first Earth Day, and measuring highway noise in New Jersey from the writing of this book. Yet, looking back, they are all part of the same journey.
From Activist to Catalyst brings together those decades of experience with a lifelong exploration of spiritual wisdom and one enduring belief: The most powerful way to change the world may be to become the kind of person through whom change can happen.
More about the founder
Gary's work continues through Evolutionary Ventures and Transformational Media. Visit the founder pages for additional background on venture building, media, and impact strategy.