2025 was a year of sharper focus, meaningful client impact, and steady growth for the Newry team. With our first full year settled into the Van Aken District, we continued helping innovators, industrial leaders, and private equity clients navigate shifting markets and pursue validated, scalable growth opportunities.

Sharpening the Growth Agenda

Across advanced materials, specialty chemicals, and industrial markets, one theme defined our strategy work this year: greater precision in choosing what to pursue — and what not to. Clients increasingly sought:

  • Adjacent market moves grounded in real demand

  • Integrated organic and inorganic pathways

  • Faster validation of opportunities before investment

Our tools and methodologies evolved accordingly, emphasizing evidence, speed, and strategic clarity.

Expanding Our Thinking

Two key pieces shaped our thought leadership this year:

Leveraging GenAI to Accelerate Growth and Innovation

We outlined how LLMs can transform front-end innovation and growth strategy by helping teams rapidly structure problems, explore adjacencies, synthesize complex data, and generate more robust options. These capabilities are now embedded in many of our internal workflows.

A New Path to Value Creation for PE Firms

Private equity continues facing longer hold periods and tighter deal economics. In response, we refined Newry’s Growth Engine approach, focused on early traction, validated commercial plays, and clearer exit stories for industrial and specialty chemical portfolio companies.

Welcoming New Colleagues

We strengthened the team with three new additions:

  • Isabel Anness, bringing analytical depth and consulting experience

  • Nicole Corbin-Hanson, adding innovation and product commercialization expertise

  • Jack McMullen, returning full-time after a strong internship supporting PE-focused strategy work

Their contributions have expanded our capability set and enriched our culture.

Giving Back to Our Community

Service was a meaningful part of our year. The Newry team contributed time and energy through hands-on volunteer work with partners across Northeast Ohio:

  • Supporting the Thea Bowman Center
    We helped unload food trucks on three separate occasions, contributing to the Center’s essential role providing food, education, and wraparound support to residents in Shaker Heights. Showing up for our community — not just with ideas, but with action — remains core to who we are.

  • Cleaning Up Edgewater Beach with Drink Local. Drink Tap.
    Our team joined a shore cleanup effort, removing 19.2 pounds of litter, including 2,000+ pieces of plastic, 200+ cigar tips, and 100+ cigarette butts. The work supported cleaner water, healthier wildlife, and the long-term vitality of the Great Lakes ecosystem we’re proud to call home.

These activities were a meaningful reminder that impact extends beyond client work — it’s also about contributing to the communities where we live and work.

Looking Ahead

In 2026, we’re focused on deepening what we do best. That means refining our core offerings to deliver even more clarity, direction, and measurable outcomes for clients navigating complex markets. It also means continuing to strengthen how we work — sharpening our methods, elevating our insights, and ensuring every engagement creates momentum where it matters most.

Equally important, we’ll continue investing in our team. Supporting professional growth, expanding capabilities, and creating opportunities for people to stretch into new industries and challenge areas will remain central to how we build the firm.

Thank you to our clients, partners, and colleagues for a strong year. We’re grateful for your trust and collaboration, and we look forward to what we’ll accomplish together in the year ahead.