Welcome
Hello, I’m Matt Smith. This is my blog on the adventure of life, and my search for a just and sustainable society.
I consider myself an explorer at heart. As a young child, I spent my days canvassing the ridges and valleys behind our home in Western Pennsylvania until I knew every square inch by heart. Fresh out of college, I set out to climb the corporate mountain at Sony Electronics in New York and later California, bringing new products to market in both the consumer and business segments. I never had a job someone else had before me – and I took pride in being first, solving the problems, and blazing the trail.
Finding myself in California at the right time, I caught the wave of internet economy setting sail with a music startup. After a few years of building things up, I watched it come crashing down underneath me, around me, and over me. But as is often the case with these things, it turned out to be good for me. Life in the high tech sector had left me wanting, looking for deeper meaning in life and my career. Happy, but never truly satisfied, I was ready to do something else, but what? I didn’t know.
Searching for some elusive part of myself, I left my home, friends, and ex-girlfriend behind, donned a backpack, and headed off on a solo trip to South East Asia in early 2003. The five-month trip across Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the corresponding insights that came as a result are the source material for a memoir that I am currently writing. I returned home, sold my house and bought a van which I lived out of for nearly a year traveling around the states, through Canada, and into Alaska.
In the fall of 2004, I returned to San Francisco and rented out an apartment. I spent a year developing iterative drafts of my book which is titled “To Be Continued: A Life in Transition.†I’ve been working with an editor and plan to write a final draft during the summer of 2006.
In late 2005 I enrolled in the Presidio School of Management for an MBA in Sustainable Management. It’s a two year program that integrates social and environmental values into every course. The program is allowing me to leverage my many years of business experience, but in a way that honors my value system and doing what is right for society and the planet as a whole.
The future is open to many possibilities, and this site will be dedicated to my exploration of them all.