TED Community » Greg Apodaca

About Me

Greg Apodaca co-founded MountainTop Strategies (MTS) in 2000 with his wife Alma. MTS is a consulting group that provides guidance, planning, coaching and support for purposeful and successful lives, teams and communities. Services are delivered through planning workshops and retreats that use experiential exercises, intellectual challenges, and physical challenge course programs that are custom designed to clarify purpose, document vision, and harness passion to achieve extraordinary levels of success. MTS clients include the L.A. County Office of Education, Pasadena LEARNS, National Farm Workers Service Centers, L.A. Department of Water and Power and many others.

Greg is founder and Executive Director of Community Without Walls, a non-profit that matches assets to needs in the greater Pasadena area. Its mission is to “envision and enable a model community in the greater Pasadena area.” The organization maintains a database of community assets and needs and functions as a communications link for their real-time sharing and deployment. In the long term, the process will significantly enhance the sharing of community resources to address pervasive and long-standing issues such as the need for a culture of increased civic engagement, lifelong education, improved human relations, economic opportunity and social justice.

Greg co-founded Leadership Pasadena and served as its Executive Director from 1997-2001. He is currently an officer on its board of directors. Leadership Pasadena is a policy level leadership development program that brings together a diverse group of business and community leaders. Program participants work in diverse teams to identify and overcome challenges to combining resources and achieving shared goals. A Graduate Network provides opportunities for cross-sector partnerships to begin and flourish around shared concerns for critical community issues. As Executive Director, Greg oversaw the raising of $500,000 to launch the organization.

Greg designed and delivered the Community Training Partnership as Director of Leadership Programs for L.A. Works. The program developed grass roots leaders to harness scarce community resources for effective community change. While there, Greg also managed four citywide days of volunteer service involving up to 4,000 adults and youth. The event was produced in collaboration with major institutions such as Sony Pictures Entertainment, City of Los Angeles, Home Depot, Los Angeles Unified School District, and American Red Cross.

Professional Certifications:
Greg is certified to deliver the Pacific Institute’s Imagine 21~Fast Track to Change curriculum, 2007.
Greg is a certified Physical Challenge Course instructor, Signature Research Inc., 2002

Community Affairs Activities:
۰ Co-founder, Board Member and Secretary, Leadership Pasadena.
۰ Co-chair, Healthy Cities Committee/ City of Pasadena, Quality of Life Index, 2002.
۰ Leadership Team, National League of Cities Task Force, Workforce Development to Combat Poverty, Pasadena, CA.
۰ Governance Task Force, Irvine Foundation's Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning, Pasadena, CA.
۰ Past-President, Pasadena Junior Chamber of Commerce, 1992-3. Board member 1987-1994