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Our Purpose

Divergent Minds. Decisive Results.

Architecting financial stability for those who build the future of our communities.

Modern architectural glass building reflecting a blue sky

Our Origin

Elysian Trust specializes in precision funding procurement, expert grant writing, and complex government contracting for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations.

We translate visionary social impact into the precise technical language that federal, public, and private funding ecosystems require.

Our foundation was built in direct service to communities that have long been overlooked, particularly those led by individuals who think, process, and lead differently. That proximity gave us something most advisory firms lack: a first-principles understanding of how unconventional thinkers build institutions, and how to make the case for them compellingly to funders who may not yet speak their language.

Our Expertise

Quantitative Success
10+

Years of combined funding strategy experience navigating complex federal, state, and philanthropic ecosystems.

$107M+

Total funding delivered across federal, public, and private sectors.

$5.0M

Maximum single contract award secured, demonstrating our capacity to win and execute high-value federal procurement.

3x

Target client growth standard — the organizational capacity benchmark we hold every engagement to before, during, and after funding is secured.

Core Values

Integrity

We do not submit proposals we do not believe in, take on clients we cannot serve well, or make promises we cannot keep. That standard has never changed.

Impact

We measure our success by the funding capacity our clients carry forward long after an engagement concludes. Every engagement is designed to increase your organization's long-term institutional strength, not just win the next grant.

Innovation

Drawing on cognitive diversity and unconventional thinking to engineer funding strategies that more traditional approaches consistently overlook.

Our Leadership & Team

Polite D. Stewart, Jr., COO/CTO of Elysian Trust
COO/CTO | Managing Partner

Polite D. Stewart, Jr.

A physics prodigy who entered college at 14, Polite earned his B.S. in Physics from Southern University A&M College at 18. Inducted shortly after into Volant, Elysian's high-IQ society, he conducted research as a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where his work focused on small and wide-angle X-ray scattering instrumentation. He later pursued a second B.S. in mechanical engineering and spent nearly four years at IBM as a DevOps specialist before transitioning into institutional advisory work.

What distinguishes Polite is a sustained record of elevating others alongside his own achievements. As a former president of multiple collegiate organizations, undergraduate teaching assistant, and student mentor, he spent years identifying and developing talent in underrepresented communities. As COO and CTO, he brings the rare ability to understand both the technical complexities of innovation and the operational realities of scaling impact. For Elysian clients, that means working with someone who has lived the journey from gifted outsider to accomplished change-maker, and has spent a career learning how to help others navigate that same path with confidence.

Nathaniel Nth Bar-Fields, Founder and CVO of Elysian Trust
Founder/CVO | Advisory Partner

Nathaniel “Nth” Bar-Fields

Nathaniel “Nth” Bar-Fields founded Elysian Trust to turn personal challenges into systemic solutions for gifted and neurodivergent communities. After navigating early educational challenges including dyslexia, Nth learned to leverage his neurodivergence as a strategic asset in lateral thinking. His career spans roles as a Navy nuclear technologist, data analyst, and program evaluator, with studies at UC Berkeley and MIT. A member of elite high-IQ societies including OLYMPIQ and Prometheus, he has also founded several others dedicated to celebrating cognitive pluralism across race, class, and neurotype.

A top graduate of Fort Hays State University's Grant Proposal Writing program, Nth has personally secured over $10 million in funding and led Elysian Trust's team to raise more than $55 million for innovative projects. As Chief Visionary Officer, he champions neurodivergent entrepreneurs and the incubators that support them, mobilizing funding and developmental resources for communities consistently overlooked by conventional systems. For Elysian clients, that means working with someone whose mission is to unlock genius in unlikely places, and build the systems around it that can actually receive it.

Ready to Transform Your Organization's Funding Strategy?

View Our Portfolio