David Townes '11
Executive Director
MBA, '11 (Carlson School of Management)
Alumni Association Member
About Catalyst Mental Health
Catalyst is a mental health organization that provides outpatient services across multiple clinic locations in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, with a growing number of remote providers based in other states. Since its founding in 2011, Catalyst has been a leader in fostering sustainable business practices in the mental health industry. Catalyst is 100% therapist-owned, focused on organic growth, and dedicated to providing high-quality services to all those in need. We believe that sustainable business practices are the key to reducing burnout in our industry and to empowering our employees to provide the best possible services to each and every client, neighborhood, and community they serve.
Address
1915 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Contact
About David
David started out his career as a Social Worker, but kept watching the businesses he worked for fall apart. Figuring that there must be a better way, David went to business school at the University of Minnesota looking for fresh ideas. Catalyst Mental Health then started as a grand experiment to put those ideas into practice, first as his own private practice and then as a larger business.
In the early days of Catalyst, David had a hard time putting certain aspects of his approach to business into words, but then discovered the B-Corp movement, and it helped fill in the gaps. Since then, the principle of sustainability has proved to be an invaluable lens for framing business problems, and it now guides most of what David does.
At heart, he is still the philosopher he was during his college years, trying to find new and creative ways to solve the world's biggest problems. David is just one of the lucky ones who found a way to turn that into a day job.
