Matt is the Founder and CEO of Blank Slate Technologies, a deeptech cognitive science firm built on peer-reviewed science that is trusted by the world’s highest performance teams.
He is also a Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs.
Past Experience:
From 2008 to 2018, Matt worked abroad in international development, focused on higher education and impact assessment work.
From 2013 to early 2018, Matt was the Managing Partner of SREO Consulting, which he co-founded in 2013. SREO is a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and research firm that analyzes development effectiveness and impact for the world's leading humanitarian and development organizations, including multiple United Nations agencies, the World Food Programme, and more than two-dozen NGOs involved in the regional refugee humanitarian response to ensure assistance is getting to those who need it most. SREO is headquartered in Istanbul with regional branch offices and staff, and has uncovered corruption, discovered stolen aid, and provided recommendations to where development work can have the highest impact. Men’s Journal profiled the organization in 2015.
From 2010 to 2014, he worked as the Director of Communications at the American University of Afghanistan. Previously, he worked at the American University of Iraq. He returned to the American University of Afghanistan to serve as Chief of Staff to the President from June to December 2021, helping to oversee, coordinate, and execute evacuation and relocation efforts for the university’s students, staff and faculty, ultimately getting more than 450 people out of the country.
In 2016, he was invited to join the Dartmouth Conference, the longest continuous bilateral discussion between leading citizens of the Soviet Union, now Russia, and the United States, established to create a sustained dialogue on the changing nature of the relationship between the two countries for the purposes of preventing nuclear war.
One of the first Americans in Iran after the 2015 nuclear deal to continue his study of Persian, he successfully completed an intensive Persian-immersion program at Tehran University, which he first walked through while visiting Tehran as a tourist in 2010. He was also briefly imprisoned as he was leaving the country as part of an abrupt crackdown on ‘Western influence’ / نفوذ غرب.
His first book is the autobiography of Afghanistan's first Minister of Higher Education after the fall of the Taliban, with a foreword written by US Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
He is also the co-host of Sources and Methods, a bi-weekly podcast which interviews leading writers and researchers and discusses their research strategies and tools.
Before going overseas, he worked as a writer and researcher at Washington, DC’s premier think tank, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, for Rock The Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Muslim World by Robin Wright, which won an Overseas Press Club award for Best Non-Fiction Title in 2012, as well as at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
His work has been featured in The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Men's Journal, NPR, CNN / Anderson Cooper's AC360, PBS NewsHour, Foreign Policy Magazine, the Daily Beast, the Wall St. Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, in addition to research publications.
He speaks Persian and can get by in Russian and Arabic, and has lived and traveled across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mali.
Rowing
A rower in high school as well as a member of D1 Boston University’s Varsity 8+, he has a post-collegiate silver medal from the Head of the Charles Regatta and also was part of the team that helped the Iraqi National Rowing Team win one of Iraq's first medals in the Asian Games.
While at graduate school at Yale, the birthplace of collegiate American rowing, he helped coach the top-ranked Lightweight Rowing Team out of the beautiful Gilder Boathouse:
Among his many failures, Matt's inability to adequately support the Afghan National Rowing team will always feature prominently. Despite the refugee athletes winning medals on the world stage for Afghanistan in 2002 and again in 2003 paired with four years of concerted assistance while he was in Kabul, the effort failed to catch flame, and will always remain a sore spot despite the invaluable lessons learned in building organizations.
Academics
He attended graduate school at Yale, where he was also Executive Editor of the Yale Journal for International Affairs.
He has a certificate in Persian from Tehran University (Level: Upper Intermediate).
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Matt graduated from Boston University in 2008 with an undergraduate degree in International Relations. In 2014, he received the Distinguished Young Alumni Award, the highest honor given to alumni less than 50 years old, from his alma mater for his work overseas. He is also a member of the Boston University College of General Studies Dean's Advisory Council as well as the Boston University Alumni Council.
