Matthew Schmidt is originally from Washington State. Growing up surrounded by the natural resource economies of the western United States, he is interested in natural resource management, including economic solutions to environmental conflicts. He completed his BA in politics and economics at Brandeis University in 2011. During this time, he organized several successful campaigns to improve the environmental sustainability of the university and spent his Segal Internship working on energy and environmental initiatives for U.S. Representative Ed Markey. His Segal Coach was Segal Founder Chris Murphy.

After persuing careers first in natural resource economic consulting and later geospatial analytics, studying at the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences since 2021.