Matt (he/him) grew up in Portland, Maine where he acquired his itch for learning history. His teachers and family opened his eyes to why local history is important to talk about – especially in conversation with older folks and peers. When Matt was sixteen he had a memorable interfaith dialogue with other teenagers at Seeds of Peace camp about their varied religious and secular upbringings. Something clicked in his mind as each person put words and emotions to describing the ways their upbringings made them grapple with cultural values and myths, religion, ethics, “otherness”, politics, and history. These experiences oriented Matt towards running similar kinds of dialogue and story-sharing programs in his college’s multifaith community.  Matt has been fortunate enough to learn from mentors about how boundary-crossing dialogue and collaboration can be strengthened by intergenerational relationship-building. This truth was reaffirmed to Matt as he constructed his history thesis around a series of conversations beginning years ago with a long-time mentor about the Maine Human Rights Commission. Each intergenerational conversation and interview helped him rethink the questions that are necessary for answering questions about where we’re from and how we got to this moment of time.

Matt graduated from Bates College with a BA in History and a Minor in Education and he loves laughing around the dinner table and doing his best to smell like campfire”