Matthew graduated in 1996 and moved to Chicago for his first job, which surprisingly made good use of his Grinnell major and campus activities (GEAR). Matthew joined the Home Access Health Corporation as a bilingual HIV counselor, where he counseled clients in English and Spanish as they used the nation's first home-based HIV testing system. Grinnell also led Matthew to his next job, when a colleague in the Office of Admission sent him a job posting from a listserv for international education professionals. Matthew was hired by The Rotary Foundation to coordinate international scholarship exchanges to Spain and Latin America. During his years the Foundation, Matthew moved from managing programs to managing the programs' staff and operational systems, where he discovered that he preferred to focus on how an organization can operate more efficiently and effectively. That discovery led him to conquer his fear of math and pursue a graduate degree in management and quantitative policy analysis at Columbia University. Matthew earned his MPA in 2004 and spent five years running operations for the K12 Learning Services division of Kaplan, Inc., most recently as its Vice President for Operations. In 2009 Matthew joined Teachscape, Inc. as General Manager for a new area of the business that is working with the Gates Foundation to study and field test ways measures of effective teaching and to provide targeted professional development to teachers. Matthew lives in San Francisco with his partner Michael and dog Hallie (named for Hallie Flanagan '11). His sister, Lizz Welch Ellis '98 is also a Grinnellian, and Matthew hopes that she raises his niece and nephews to be future Grinnellians.