Independent Strategic Counsel
Andrew Darst advises principals and operators across strategy, energy, and security — clear judgment for the high-stakes decisions that get made where the ground is unfamiliar and mistakes are expensive.
What We Believe
Every project worth doing has a version that fails and a version that works. The difference is rarely capital. It is sequencing, timing, and who you trust before you have proof.
We are not in the business of enthusiasm. We are in the business of getting the order of operations right, and saying so plainly when a plan does not hold up.
What We Do
Durable competitive advantage, new revenue, sharper operations. Every engagement begins with the unvarnished truth and ends with a course of action you can defend.
Judgment across the full energy value chain — from geopolitical risk to grid-level technology — where policy, capital, and technology intersect and the transition is rewriting the rules.
Managing serious threats and building a resilient posture that allows for confident growth. Security is not a cost of doing business — it is the precondition for taking ground.
Our Worldview
The 21st century is defined by the convergence of economic, technological, and geopolitical power. Darst works at the nexus of these forces — the strategic foresight to not only navigate an era of unusual complexity and competition, but to master it.
That is why strategy, energy, and security are treated as one discipline here, not three separate practices. The hardest problems rarely respect those boundaries — policy, technology, and risk move together, and durable advantage belongs to whoever reads them as a single system.
Engagement Criteria
How We Work
This is not a research shop. Every engagement is built to move you from ambiguity to a defensible course of action — and to stay with it until it holds.
We establish the unvarnished truth of the situation — the real problem beneath the presenting one, and the forces that will shape any outcome.
We design a strategy with clear options, honest trade-offs, and the conviction to recommend one — built to withstand pressure and change.
We stay accountable to the result, driving the work through to completion and adapting as conditions move beneath it.
Principles
We tell you what we think.
We say no when the answer is no.
Our judgment isn’t for sale.
We are retained for our view, not our agreement.
We take on work where our judgment genuinely changes the outcome.
We measure the relationship in years, not in the next transaction.
The Principal
Andrew has spent his career close to projects that took years to prove out, and relationships that took longer. He built the instincts this firm runs on the way most people build anything real: slowly, and by being present when things went wrong.
He works directly with every client. There is no team to hand off to, no junior analyst translating the relationship — just one person’s judgment, applied to your project, for as long as you need it.
Talk to AndrewKeep the first message short — a few sentences on the situation, and what would change if we got it right. We respond selectively.
You will hear from Andrew personally, not an associate.
What you share with us stays with us, engaged or not.
A first conversation costs you nothing but the time it takes.
