Matt was born into a family with a long tradition of service in the United States Navy and Marine Corps. Raised in Langhorne, Pennsylvania he attended the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University before being commissioned as an Infantry Officer in the Marine Corps in 1990 and retiring from active duty with the rank of Colonel. 

Matt spent his thirty-year career leading increasingly larger Infantry units and eventually Marine Air-Ground Task Force and Joint staffs in combat zones around the globe. In the last ten years of his career Matt excelled in assembling and integrating multi-national force components, creating “a team of teams,” in complex political and cultural environments. He has a proven ability to rapidly build inclusive teams that work together with a sense of familiarity and confidence. To include the most difficult challenges — joint and coalition forces deploying on no-notice in support of crisis response operations. 

Matt brings these same skills to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory where he builds teams and integrates concept development, wargaming, science/technology, and live-force experimentation staffs to inform force design and development activities of the Marine Corps.    

Matt has earned post-graduate degrees and fellowships related to strategic political-military coordination and planning of United States Government activities. He holds a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College. A Master of Military Studies from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College where he was also a Distinguished Graduate and winner of the Colonel Bevan G. Cass award. Matt was also a National Security Fellow, Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.