About Us
Matt Wilson - Principal
I grew up at 43 Spring Glen Drive in Granby, CT, a small town of 6,000 people. Granby was a community in every sense of the world. From its volunteer fire department to the residents who helped start one of the first community recycling programs in the nation, the town thrived on the energy and passion of its residents.
My mother and father were in the thick of it. And they brought me, my brothers, and my sister along with them. My Dad, was the chair of the Board of Education and led the campaign to build the town’s new high school in the 1970s. My Mom was the school enumerator, who knocked on every door in town to count how many school aged children there were in Granby. They were leaders in the town historical society, the Granby Republican Town Committee, the town student exchange program and many other groups that made this town tick.
When I lived on Spring Glen Drive in Granby, my town, my parents, and my siblings taught me that when a community comes together, anything is possible. My success as a nonprofit director, community organizer, and campaign director comes directly from these values of hard work, the power of community, and the worth of good hard work.
Matt Wilson has extensive experience building and running community-based initiatives for a healthier and more progressive world. As a nonprofit executive, community organizer, trainer, and campaign director, Wilson has worked with residents to help them vision, realize, and build their capacity and power for change. He has led campaigns for a cleaner environment, affordable and accessible health care, to end the Iraq War, increase investment in the arts, and to elect progressive government leaders.
Throughout his career, Wilson has consulted with community based, statewide and national organizations which are working for change.
Wilson was the founding Executive Director of MASSCreative, the statewide advocacy voice for Massachusetts’ arts, cultural, and creative community. Under his direction, MASSCreative grew to more than 400 organizational members with 25,000 individuals taking part in public education and advocacy actions. In his tenure, arts funding in the Commonwealth doubled and his advocacy work helped implement state policies to increase access and participation to quality arts education.
As the National Director of the field staff for MoveOn.org, Wilson helped develop and implement the strategy behind MoveOn.org’s successful 2006 Call for Change program that helped the Democrats take back Congress. Call for Change recruited and trained more than 100,000 volunteers who made over seven million phone calls to targeted voters in 60 swing Congressional and Senate districts.
As the Director of Toxics Action Center, Wilson built the organization from scratch to a New England-wide resource for hundreds of neighborhoods working to protect themselves from pollution threats.
Wilson graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a Masters of Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
