Arthur Kalala Katalayi (; born May 10, 1982), nicknamed "The Katalyst", is a French businessman, podcaster,

consultant A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

and entrepreneur based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A former senior advisor to the

chairman The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the grou ...

of the

board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

state-owned State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownersh ...

copper and cobalt mining company Gecamines, he is a senior partner at boutique management consulting firm A2k Advisory and host for the mining-focused podcast The Right Advice.

Early life and education

A Luba art collector of Luba ancestry, Katalayi was born near the French Alps at the Edouard Herriot Hospital in the city of Lyon, France. He was raised in Paris.“Katalayi Raises Awareness About Congo”
'' News at Rider University'' May 22, 2009. Retrieved 16 December 2010 His namesakes are American tennis player Arthur Ashe and Kingdom of Luba emperor Kalala Ilunga. Katalayi first visited the Democratic Republic of Congo aged 6; in

Kinshasa Kinshasa (; ; ln, Kinsásá), formerly Léopoldville ( nl, Leopoldstad), is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once a site of fishing and trading villages situated along the Congo River, Kinshasa is now one o ...

, and Lubumbashi, in the

Katanga Province Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika Province, Tanganyika, Hau ...

. At the age of 16, he left France for the United Kingdom where he spent a year in London, before attending the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College from 1999 until 2001. Katalayi moved to the United States in July 2001 arriving in New York City. He then settled in Pittsburgh before moving to

Salem International University Salem University is a private for-profit university in Salem, West Virginia. It has about 250 students on campus and about 600 online students that are enrolled in undergraduate as well as graduate programs. The university was founded by the Sev ...

earning a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Information Technology in 2005. At Salem, he played college soccer as a student-athlete on an athletic scholarship; winning the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference cup. He subsequently moved to New Jersey and earned a Master of Arts in Oganizational Leadership and Information Technology from Rider University in 2009.

Career

After graduating, Katalayi worked briefly as a market analyst for New York Stock Exchange in New York City, and as a finance analyst for Bloomberg LP in Princeton, New Jersey. He then moved back to Europe and was hired by Capgemini Engineering to work in the company's Paris office as a management consultant. In 2014, Katalayi joined

mining firm Gecamines as a senior advisor to its chairman Albert Yuma. He was also the latter's economic advisor at the Federation of Businesses of the Congo, Congo's largest

employer federation An employers' organization or employers' association is a collective organization of manufacturers, retailers, or other employers of wage labor. Employers' organizations seek to coordinate the behavior of their member companies in matters of mutua ...

. At the time it was understood that Gecamines was assessing different modes of financing"Congo's Gecamines Shelves Sale of Stake in Glencore Copper Mine"
' The Wall Street Journal'' June 2, 2014. Retrieved 2016-21-05 with the possibility to monetize some of its copper and cobalt assets via an initial public offering – Gecamines stakes in its

joint-ventures A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to access ...

thought to be valued in excess of $2 billion; which includes a $1 billion valuation in

Glencore Glencore plc is a Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. Glencore's oil and gas head office is in London and its registered office is in Saint Helier, Jersey. The current company was c ...

-controlled Kamoto Copper Company according to a

Bank of America Merrill Lynch BofA Securities, Inc., previously Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), is an American multinational investment banking division under the auspices of Bank of America. It is not to be confused with Merrill, the stock brokerage and trading plat ...

report. The Democratic Republic of Congo, via Gecamines, holds 80% of the world's cobalt reserves, the price of which has soared more than 70% on the London Metal Exchange and is the hottest

commodity In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...

within the global financial market as of 2017. Given the insatiable demand for cobalt, a key ingredient used in

lithium-ion batteries A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also se ...

powering everything from Apple Inc.,'s iPhone to Tesla, Inc. cars, the interest in the mineral that helps fuel the Chinese and Californian economies is only likely to increase and yield more future opportunities for Gecamines; especially considering that cobalt is essential for the battery technology needed for the shift to

renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...

. In a Financial Times interview, Gecamines chairman expressed his dissatisfaction with existing joint-ventures, having failed to generate excepted dividends, and that future partnerships with investors will differ from current ones. Katalayi was a senior advisor and global ambassador for Giving Back to Africa for over 10 years.

Personal life

Katalayi met his wife Nathalie, a devoted

pediatric nurse Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until t ...

, in Brussels in 2001; they married in Liege in 2007. She is a school nurse at The American School of Kinshasa in

. They have a daughter Akeelah, a ballerina, and a son, Akhenaten, a

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

player. Both of whom attend The American School of Kinshasa.

Awards and recognition

*2012, SAfm's Mover and Shaker - South African Broadcasting Corporation; Johannesburg. *2017, Global Top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent in the world - under 40; New York. "Most Influential Persons of African Descent 2017 List Released"
''Say Nigeria'', April 18, 2017. Retrieved 7 October 2017
' CNN'' May 27, 2017. Retrieved 7 October 2017

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Katalayi, Arthur-Kalala Living people Rider University alumni Businesspeople from New York (state) Businesspeople from New Jersey Businesspeople from London French expatriates in the United States Salem International University alumni People from Princeton, New Jersey Businesspeople from Pittsburgh French emigrants to the United States French people of Democratic Republic of the Congo descent American people of Democratic Republic of the Congo descent People from Lubumbashi Businesspeople from Indiana People from Kinshasa 1982 births