Meet Matt

Hi, I’m Matt. Thanks for taking the time to learn about me.

I am a devoted husband and dad, a sustainability professional, and a staunch advocate for the people of Durham.

Growing up, my dad was a Green Beret and a brewery worker, while my mom was our primary care giver, a massage therapist, and an active volunteer in our public schools and social justice organizations. My parents raised my sister and me to understand the importance of community, be of service to others, and fight for what we believe in. These simple but foundational values took me around the world and back again, led me to my wife, Sarah, and brought us to Durham, our beloved home.

In Durham, I have served on the Planning Commission and the Environmental Affairs Board, I co-founded Durham Living Wage, co-chaired the Durham Public School Foundation’s campaign to Accelerate Digital Equity during COVID, and have served on numerous boards. I helped champion the campaign for the city and county to adopt resolutions to transition to 100% renewable energy and was a coalition partner of a campaign that successfully advocated to pay city and private sector workers a living wage.

I started my career supporting women’s cooperatives as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin. Directly after, I became an affordable housing and community development advocate in Washington, DC. While getting my MBA, I fought to keep Durhamites in their homes during the mortgage foreclosure crisis and helped a union of wastepickers in India get their workers out of landfills and dumpsters and into a door-to-door collection business. Today, as a sustainability consultant, I help businesses develop climate action plans, reduce plastic waste, make products safer, and protect the rights and livelihoods of workers and small landholders.

Thanks to this range of experiences, I understand public policy, business strategy, organizational development, budgeting, and how to navigate and influence government bureaucracies to benefit the community. I understand the interaction of policy, markets, and organizing at the local, state, and national level. I listen deeply, think long term, and see nuance in how things get done. Most of all, I know why I do the work that I do and for whom I do it.

I enjoy spending time with family and friends, riding my bike around town, playing pickup soccer with my kids, and listening to podcasts and audiobooks. And I love to dance, drum, and sing pretty much wherever the opportunity arises (unless my kids are around, because then it’s apparently embarrassing).