Ari Wallach, 37, heads a consulting firm that draws power from an eclectic mix of unconventional experts. Resolving conflict through discourse is the theme of a career spanning politics, commerce, and religion.
As the founder of Synthesis, a strategic consulting firm based in D.C. and New York, Ari Wallach helps government, NGO, and corporate clients--including CNN, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. State Department, and United Nations Refugee Agency--find innovative solutions to complex problems. For the student of political philosophy who once considered going to rabbinical school, synthesis--resolving seemingly incompatible views and experiences--has been the theme running through his eclectic career that's ranged from conflict resolution at UC Berkeley, to finance work with the Democratic National Committee, new-media projects, consulting with the nonprofit Coro Foundation, and the "Great Schlep" campaign to get out the Jewish vote for Obama in 2008.
FAST COMPANY: How is Synthesis different from other, bigger consulting firms?
ARI WALLACH: All Synthesis is, is myself and my partner running the back end. It's like cloud innovation; we're really trying to build a next-generation consultancy, drawing on a different kind of expert network. All the rock stars I know now are freelancers and perma-lancers, but there's no mechanism for them to work together as teams--for a few days or a year or two. We're working to figure out the infrastructure for this kind of organization.
We'll hire a stay-at-home mom who doesn't want to return to a position at McKinsey, but will give us 15 brilliant hours a week in between everything else she's doing in her life. We can bring in an urban-graffiti practitioner or someone who builds amazing shelters at Burning Man and used to build DARPA-contract structures and get them to reframe what they do so it's relevant to a client's issues. We don't have a one-size-fits-all process like other consulting firms have. It's like going to a Fre...
[Source: Fast Company]
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