Catalyst Inc appoints Connect director as new chief
Top role: Steve Orr CATALYST Inc has announced the appointment of its new chief executive.
Steve Orr, who is the current director of Connect, will take the helm at the Titanic Quarter complex on November 1.
He replaces Dr Norman Apsley, who announced his retirement in June after holding the position for 18 years.
A graduate of Business Information Technology from the University of Northumbria, Mr Orr’s career in tech has taken him from Buckinghamshire to San Diego and San Francisco.
In 2000, he co-founded Kineticom Inc, a technical talent firm based in San Diego.
In 2006 Kineticom was ranked number 33 on the Inc 500, the list of the fastest growing privately held companies in the USA.
In 2008, Mr Orr returned to Northern Ireland to Catalyst Inc, setting up Connect, a community-led innovation ecosystem to support entrepreneurs ‘to aim higher and succeed faster’.
From a disused site in the Titanic Quarter, the Northern Ireland Science Park, later rebranded as Catalyst Inc, has rapidly expanded in recent years. It is now a tech hub for 200 companies, with around 3,000 people.
In a tribute to its outgoing chief executive, a spokesperson for Catalyst Inc described Dr Apsley as “an advocate of the talent and ambition of innovators and inventors”.
They said: “Dr Norman Apsley has devoted his career to enterprise promotion. His focus is unashamedly on the development and growth of what we term the knowledge economy; that is an economy built upon innovation, entrepreneurship and the intellectual capital within NI.”