The tremendous advancements in organic chemistry and the success of the chemical science industries in the past century can be credited to catalysts based on transition metals such as palladium, platinum, cobalt, rhodium, gold, ruthenium, and rare earth metals. However, the past decade has also witnessed a renaissance in using cheap and abundant first-row transition metals such as Ni, Cu, and Fe as catalysts in organic synthesis. Numerous academic and industrial processes now involve first-row transition metals catalysts supported with cheap ligand frameworks. The seminal reports of Baran, MacMillan, Doyle, Molander, Weix, Lin, Fu, Reisman, Diao, and others in merging redox perturbation (photochemical, electrochemical, and purely chemical) with catalysis are pivotal to the resurgence and mechanistic understanding of first-row transition metal-based catalysis.