Multi-disciplinary designer, people leader and team builder, product leader and strategist.
For over 20 years Matt has been at the front end of developing commercially successful products and has worked in multiple design capacities, across industries and product types. Rooted in tradition Industrial Design Matt’s career spans brands such as KitchenAid, Yamaha, and Stryker and has evolved to providing user-centered design leadership across customer experiences and modalities to drive competitive brands.
Matt’s capacities in his last roll as VP, Product Experience and Design included building the foundational architecture and principles for Traeger’s connected eco-system across the cooking journey. Experience and service design, research design and synthesis, value identification, packaging, instructional, and industrial design collaborated under his leadership resulting in the 2022 launch of a new flagship grill the Timberline XL. RollingStone called the Timberline XL “the most elegant grill they ever cooked on regardless of fuel type”, it recently won a 2023 Red Dot Design Award, and Forbes calls Traeger “the Apple of the outdoor cooking world.”
Matt currently operates a strategic design and product leadership consultancy, Handsome Lad Consulting, where he continues to practice the principles of User Centered Design, hypothesizing prototyping and testing experiences across hardware and connected software. Matt lives in Kalamazoo with his Wife Jeni and their two children Lena and Sully.