How I got here

If you want my résumé, you can view or download it to the right.

But I'm kind of fond of the narrative approach, and you might also want to read the extended edition below.

The Story

We have a wealth of opportunities as citizens of the United States, and one of the challenges many people of my generation have faced is deciding which opportunities to pursue. If you want to be a firefighter, a doctor, a business-owner, a chef, or whatever else, in many cases you can put in the effort, acquire the skills and knowledge, and build a life in your chosen career.

Finding a career that brings you joy and contentment requires experiencing different kinds of work and reflecting on what you like and dislike about them. For me, my journey started with the assumption that I would like to be an author because I love to read. And because my dad worked with computers, I rebelled against that idea and wanted to avoid Information Technology.

Missouri State University

I went to college and double-majored in Religious Studies and Creative Writing (Poetry), because in the early-2000s, we believed that the subject of a college degree mattered less than having one. At the same time, I took a job as a student worker in the computer labs at my university because learning for the sake of learning is great but it doesn't necessarily pay the bills.

Despite being a minimum wage lab monitor whose primary functions were to unjam printers and make sure nothing got stolen, I already had a lot of IT experience when I turned 18. So when the university was hit with a virus attack that shut down all financial services and the bookstore, I found myself drafted into leading the manual remediation efforts because no one else knew how. When wireless internet was being rolled out, I wrote the documentation on how to connect to it. And when the university changed its name and consequently needed to change its domain, move 6000+ computers to the new domain, and do it without inconveniencing users, I was the one to figure out how to do that quickly and efficiently and I led the team of full-time staff on the project.

This contributed to me being hired full-time at Missouri State University where, over the next few years, I led a number of other high-profile projects, was promoted into management, and navigated the hazardous rapids of budget cuts and increasing demands successfully. By the time I left, I had secured budget increases for my area and we won the "Best Service on Campus" award multiple years in a row, which was a far cry from the "Helpless Desk," as we were called when I started.

Adaptavist

Despite my original intent when I went to college, I found that I really enjoyed my career in IT, and that I particularly loved project management. I enrolled in a Master of Science program in Project Management and found a job at a consulting and software development company named Adaptavist. My years of experience working with Atlassian software at the university combined with a myriad of other projects and programs equipped me as a consultant and, in a strange twist of fate, set me up as one of the leading worldwide experts on Atlassian.

Over the next few years, I would help a number of company's teams work better together, and I also helped Atlassian develop a certification program by contributing to the exam blueprint designs, writing questions and answers, developing study materials, and delivering training at conferences. When my CEO asked me to take over the training department at Adaptavist, I built teams from scratch to develop eLearning, write documentation, and create a training plug-in for Jira to deliver our content in-app.

Stride

While I loved Adaptavist and my team there, I felt like my career had gone as far as it could unless I moved to the United Kingdom. I began looking for my next adventure and joined Stride to lead a new product they were building.

When I joined, they had been working for eight months with no real product leadership. There were brilliant people there, but they were either spread across multiple programs of work or were really new to product management. This particular product was ambitious and complex, and they needed someone with modern software development and cloud architecture knowledge who could guide the product development and delivery. The roadmap was non-existent, the code had no automated testing and was buggy, and everyone was incredibly stressed and burning out.

During the seven months I was Director of Product Management at Stride, I built a 6-month roadmap for our product, figured out how to fold an acquisition in and move that business forward in a healthy manner, unblocked recruiting, pushed the team forward to pay down 4 months worth of tech debt while delivering 2 releases and having 2 more half done, and earned the trust of my product, design, research, and engineering teams.

The last major project I delivered at Stride was analysis on a product we acquired that was very similar to the one my team was building. I worked out what we'd keep from that product and how it would integrate with ours, and I integrated that into our roadmap.

After parting ways with Stride, I decided to start my own company while continuing to look for a salaried position.

Fieldway

Fieldway exists to help people work better together, to do the next right thing, and to work in the best way. The best work honors both our teammates and our customers, and it delivers maximum value to both the business and its customers.

I decided to start my own company after talking with executives, team leads, and employees at dozens of companies who needed help finding their way forward. With 20 years of experience in the IT space, I’ve run into many of the challenges that companies and teams are facing today, and I can help solve them.

My goal is to help you become better and move forward without me. I will teach your employees the skills they need to make your company better and delight your customers. I care deeply about your success and the experience of your customers, and those will always be my priority.

Learn more at Fieldway.org.

CoinDesk

In the fall of 2022, I began interviewing with CoinDesk for a Senior Product Manager role. This person would sit between editorial and engineering to own their content management system, Arc XP, and drive forward feature development to help the journalists, video producers, podcasters, and others who produced content at CoinDesk.

The team interviewing me were originally skeptical because I lacked experience in journalism, but quickly realized that I have a lot of experience in a lot of different areas. By the end of the process, my now-boss shared that what he really needed was a director who could own everything from end-to-end to help them improve their product and engineering processes, deliver more value, and reduce the chaos. He asked, would I be willing to come in and do director-level work and get my arms around everything, not just the CMS, and then hopefully he could promote me to a more appropriate title in six months?

The truth is that I'm not capable of working any other way. I observe and operate with a systems thinking approach, so I need to understand how everything works together. I develop deep insights and then use that newly gained perspective to help improve processes and prioritize the right work.

True to his word, 6 months after being hired in December 2022, I was promoted to Director of Product Management and my boss is happy to consider the title back-dated to when I was hired since I was doing the work all along.

These days, I'm directing the work of Product & Engineering for everything we build. I run our scrum ceremonies, write all the stories, prioritize the backlog, represent our team and work to executive leadership, meet with 9 different stakeholder groups across the company, and work to help us build in The CoinDesk Way.

Matthew brings energy and enthusiasm into every room. His ability to apply his vast product and project management skills while garnering the support of the development teams that he manages is impressive! I am grateful for his mentorship and his contagious desire to never stop learning and becoming better in all things, professionally and personally.

Jackie Witchko

Product, Program & Operations Leader

Immediately after joining our team, Matthew's experience, knowledge, and value became apparent. He clearly articulated the "why" behind the project to which he was assigned, improved processes, and gained team buy-in.

Matthew is a strong leader, able to mentor and teach, and he has a breadth of experience and understanding across many industries and supporting companies at all stages of their journey.

Jennifer Richardson

Director of Product

Matthew has that rare ability to see both the forest AND the trees. A gifted strategic thinker, an engaged people manager and a creative and innovative solutions architect.

Any organization that is fortunate enough to work with Matthew will be far better off for having done so.

David Fabie

AVP - Global Assignments and Culture

Latest Projects

Experience tells the story best. Take a few minutes to explore my portfolio, where you’ll find examples of my work, the impact I've had, and how I define and measure success.

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