How we can help
North Cascades Strategies works in three disciplines necessary to change complicated systems. The depth in each and the ability to effectively coordinate among them sets NCS apart from other firms. The firm offers services in each individually and as parts of a comprehensive, long-term strategy engagement.
Integrated Capital Strategies
Jonah co-founded a multi-billion-dollar investment platform at Breakthrough Energy and engineered the strategy behind its funds, programs, and philanthropy. As Chief Strategy Officer at Generate Capital he worked inside one of the country's most sophisticated sustainable infrastructure investors shaping how the firm invests in the next phase of electricity build out in the United States.
Integrated Capital Strategy is the method built on that foundation. Most ambitious efforts treat philanthropic, political, concessional, market-rate, and public capital as separate worlds. The result is familiar: philanthropy funds pilots that never scale, investors wait for conditions that policy never delivers, and public dollars arrive after the moment has passed. We design these five forms of capital as one portfolio, each doing what only it can do, measured against one shared outcome.
Engagements range from a rapid diagnostic of how your capital is currently working to the full architecture of a multi-party capital strategy.
Public Affairs
Strategies fail when they treat policy as weather, something that happens to you. Jonah has spent two decades on the other side of that assumption: leading national advocacy campaigns, advising political donors on where their resources move outcomes, shaping regulatory environments for one of the largest climate investment platforms in the world, and building coalitions that survive election cycles because they are built on aligned interests rather than litmus tests and ideological purity. Too many investment platforms refuse to invest when there is “policy risk” and too many policy shops ignore the realities of how private capital will shape outcomes.
Our understanding of both domains help build the policy structures that foresee obstacles and shape a more durable path toward change. Our approach coordinates policy and regulatory strategy, political capital deployment, coalition design and management, and engagement with industry as a partner in structural change.
Communications
Most communications work decorates a strategy after the decisions are made. Ours is built into the strategy from the start, because the audiences who must move decide whether the goal is reachable at all, and those audiences include voters, regulators, investors, customers, and employees.
Communications has been built into Jonah's career since he got his start as a civil rights lawyer, as the primary spokesperson and communications strategist for Election Protection. His time with Glover Park Group expanded the issues for which he built communications strategies and execution plans to education, nuclear security, and modern philanthropy. Jonah ran global media for the Gates Foundation and was Bill Gates's primary communications partner at the foundation. At Breakthrough Energy, Jonah built the communications strategy that guided the buildout of the initial Breakthrough Energy Coalition, the launch of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and the establishment of Mission Innovation, all while leading the overall operations of the Breakthrough entities. Jonah also led brand and external affairs as Chief Strategy Officer at Generate Capital. The practice covers narrative strategy, integrated campaign design, executive positioning, writing and thought leadership, and communications counsel through high-stakes moments.