Director, Health and Human Services Committee, National Governors Association

Prior to joining NGA in January of 1999, where he oversees the development of the Governors’ health care and human services reform agendas, Matt cut his teeth for five years working for the National Association of State Medicaid Directors. He earned his first health policy Purple Heart analyzing the Clinton Health Security Act, his second with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, a third in designing the Medicaid reforms in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, and is now sticking his head in the line of fire with the NGA Health Care Reform Working Group. Matt firmly believes he was personally responsible for securing the entire tobacco settlement for the states, getting $20 billion in state fiscal relief, and in modernizing the Medicaid program. Matt taught high school for two years at T.C. Williams High in Alexandria, VA, which actually bears no resemblance to the school they profiled in the Disney movie, Remember the Titans. He holds a BA in Eastern Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, and is still trying to find ways to explain how that got him to where he is today. Matt’s proudest achievement to date is that Ed Howard of the Alliance for Health Reform thinks this is the most amusing biographical sketch he’s ever seen.