Matt is an Assemblymember in the State of California, representing the 17th Assembly District. Prior to that, he was a San Francisco Supervisor for District 6. In 2015, Matt was unanimously elected as the President of the Board of Education in San Francisco. He was first elected as a Commissioner in 2012. Matt has also been an Education Fellow and Lecturer at the Stanford Design School where he is applying design thinking to incubate innovative ideas in education. Matt is a 2007 Mitchell Scholar. He received a joint LLM in International Human Rights Law from Queen's University Belfast and NUI Galway. Matt interned at the Human Rights Commission in Belfast where he conducted research as part of the development of the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights. Studying the obstacles and the complex political landscape faced by those seeking change in Northern Ireland helped Matt develop the tools and leadership style he uses when tackling the challenges of overseeing the education of 56,000 students in at 110 schools in San Francisco.

Matt obtained his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley.