Selected work

Projects & Case Studies

A working portfolio of institutional initiatives I’ve led at Mount Vernon, Edelman, and the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library — plus a few personal projects from outside of work.

Start here

Thirty-one case studies is a lot. If you have five minutes, these three cover the range — a communications campaign, an institutional build, and something I wrote the code for.

  1. $98M in Earned Media Opening a presidential library to the world — 312 placements, a four-strand campaign, and an honest account of the coverage that wasn’t friendly.
  2. Mount Vernon’s Website Rebuilt Ten years, 2.5M to 8M+ annual visitors, and e-commerce from $1.1M to $8.6M. The long-horizon institutional work.
  3. Twenty-Odd Tools, Zero Servers Why a two-person communications shop built its own software instead of buying it — and what that decision saved.

Featured

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

Theodore Roosevelt rendered in illuminated drones over the Badlands

TR Presidential Library · 2026

1,776 Drones Over the Badlands

Producing a presidential library’s opening weekend — a sold-out ceremony, twelve livestreamed sessions, and a drone show for 6,000 people in a town of 130.

1,776
drones
6,000
at the show
12
sessions
The Medal of Honor presentation at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

TR Presidential Library · July 2026

A Sitting President & a Medal of Honor

Advancing a presidential dedication three days before opening — two press operations, one site, and a news cycle nobody scripted.

269K
views
5
videos
3 days
before opening
Twenty-Odd Tools, Zero Servers

TR Presidential Library · 2025–2026

Twenty-Odd Tools, Zero Servers

A two-person comms shop shipped 20+ production tools on static hosting and scheduled jobs — no backend anywhere.

20+
tools
$0
hosting
0
servers
Six Systems, One Visitor

TR Presidential Library · 2026

Six Systems, One Visitor

An automated visitor lifecycle unifying six source systems into one profile, with a nine-level priority hierarchy.

41
emails
5
journeys
6
systems
Selling a Trip to the Badlands

TR Presidential Library · 2026

Selling a Trip to the Badlands

Five spots in two registers, pre-opening lifestyle photography, and a Plan Your Visit page built to tell the truth.

1,900
visitors/day
50%
days sold out
The Trailblazer

TR Presidential Library · 2026

The Trailblazer

An RFID wearable designed around the exit rather than the entrance — and the recap email that follows it home.

RFID
wearable
#1
open rate
16.46%
avg click-through rate
vs. 5% Grant minimum

TRPL Foundation · 2024–present

AI Google Ad Grant Optimizer

An AI agent that audits the Grant account, drafts a change plan, and executes via the Google Ads & GA4 APIs — sustaining 3× the Grant’s minimum CTR.

25.78%
peak CTR
$10K/mo
Grant deployed

Institutional work

Plan Your Day — Mount Vernon's custom Tessitura ticketing workflow

Mount Vernon · 2015–2017 · on Tessitura

Plan Your Day Ticketing

A custom Tessitura API ticketing workflow that walks visitors through date, admission, timed Mansion tour, specialty add-ons, enhancement items, and discounts — built mobile-first.

12% → 45%
online ticket share
#1
mobile as top channel
Mount Vernon Virtual Tour

Mount Vernon · 2018–2024

Virtual Tour

An immersive HDR walkthrough of the estate widely adopted by classrooms — 4M+ visitors at an 18-minute dwell.

4M+
visitors
18m
avg dwell
Revolutionary War 4D Theater interior with snow falling

Mount Vernon · 2018 · Gold Telly

Revolutionary War 4D Theater

A $3.5M reinvention of Mount Vernon’s second-most-visited attraction — new 4K original film, curved 32×16 ft screen, 9.2 surround, snow, fog, strobes, and gobos.

$3.5M
investment
3
Telly Awards
Aerial of Mount Vernon from the orientation film with title overlay

Mount Vernon · 2022 · Gold Telly

Orientation Film

A 10:30 orientation film that replaced a 30-minute legacy production at the front door — and now ships on YouTube, in pre-visit email, and to tour operators.

Gold Telly
2022
10:30
vs. ~30 min legacy
Smartglasses augmented reality tour at Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon · 2019–2020 · with ARtGlass

Mount Vernon in AR

A 45-minute self-guided AR tour on Epson Moverio smartglasses — one of the first U.S. historic sites with regular wearable-AR visitor offerings.

1st
U.S. site at scale
6
outdoor stops
A family on the grounds at Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon · 2018–2020 · with Guide ID

Audio Tour Replatform

From a $7 add-on with single-digit adoption to a free-with-admission, 5-language, 53-stop, podcast-style audio tour on the Guide ID Podcatcher Pro.

53
stops · 4+ hrs audio
5
languages
Numismatic Kiosk — Medals from the American Numismatic Society

Mount Vernon · 2018–2020 · with American Numismatic Society

Numismatic Kiosk

An in-house touchscreen accompanying War and Peace in Miniature, a temporary exhibit of 30 rare early American medals on loan from the ANS — each one smaller than a silver dollar, finally legible at touchscreen scale.

30
medals on loan
9
thematic categories
Mount Vernon short film series

Mount Vernon · 2015–2023 · Telly Awards

Short Film Series

Four animated history films with Wide Awake Films — three Telly Awards, four streaming platforms, and free classroom lesson plans.

3
Telly Awards
4
films
Mount Vernon Magazine — covers across Matt's editorship

Mount Vernon · Editor · 2020–2024

Mount Vernon Magazine

Editor of the tri-annual print magazine for the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association — serious history for members, donor stewardship for the institution.

12
issues edited
3×/yr
print + digital
Mount Vernon's COVID-19 response — daily livestreams, online classrooms, food and PPE donations, outdoor-only reopening

Mount Vernon · 2020 · pandemic response

When the Estate Closed, Mount Vernon Went Live

Daily livestreams five days a week, a rebuilt online-learning hub for K–12 teachers, food and unused PPE donated to local hospitals and first responders, and a Level I outdoor-only reopening with a published safety playbook.

5x/week
daily livestreams
~70%
school-group revenue at risk
Mount Vernon Explorer mobile app

Mount Vernon · 2015–2024

Mount Vernon Explorer

Pivoted a native iOS & Android visitor app to a mobile-web experience, nearly tripling adoption (~5% → ~13%) with a shuttle tracker, themed audio tours, and content syndicated from mountvernon.org.

~2.6×
adoption uplift
0 install
just a URL
Agent 711 spy app on a phone with Mount Vernon's Mansion behind

Mount Vernon · 2015 · with Cortina Productions

Agent 711: Spy Adventure

A location-aware smartphone game that turns the 500-acre estate into a Revolutionary-era Culper Ring mission for tweens and teens.

8
spy challenges
10–16
target age
Strengthening Our Foundations — the Campaign for Mount Vernon, $150M for America's 250th

Mount Vernon · 2021–2024 · with Evoker & Red Paper Plane

The Campaign for Mount Vernon

$150M comprehensive capital campaign for America’s 250th. Four-film series with Evoker, a 7″ HD video brochure with Red Paper Plane that drove $2.5M in directly attributed gifts, and the campaign website at campaignformountvernon.org.

$150M
campaign goal
$2.5M
from the video mailer
The Great Experiment — Foundations of Democracy with Harrison Ford, Zoe Saldana, Don Cheadle, and Maya Hawke

Mount Vernon · 2023 · with UVA Center for Politics

The Great Experiment: Democracy Symposium

10th-anniversary symposium for the George Washington Presidential Library, anchored by an original 1,020-person nationwide democracy poll and a celebrity short-film series with Harrison Ford, Zoe Saldana, Don Cheadle, and Maya Hawke.

11
panels · 3 days
1,020
Americans polled
Mount Vernon 2023 + TRPL 2024 annual report covers side by side

Mount Vernon + TRPL · 2023–2024

A Tale of Two Annual Reports

Editing back-to-back annual reports for two institutions at opposite ends of their life cycles — Mount Vernon at 170 years, TRPL at year zero. Issuu reader plus a custom HTML flipbook built from scratch.

76 + 41
pages, two reports
1853 / 2026
year founded / year opens
Edelman Multiplier engagement platform

Edelman · 2011–2014 · “largest client-facing tech investment to date”

Multiplier — The Engagement Tool

A modular Salesforce + LAMP multi-tenant platform powering Edelman’s advocacy, consumer-marketing, and PR engagement work across 60+ client tenants.

60+
client tenants

industry-standard results
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Tidal Basin

Emotive · 2006–2011 · MLK Memorial Project Foundation

MLK Jr. National Memorial

Digital marketing, small-dollar fundraising, VIP+public RSVP ticketing for the 2006 groundbreaking, and the Morgan Freeman “Build The Dream” spot for the first African American memorial on the National Mall.

$15M+
raised digitally
$120M
total campaign target
Pickens Plan logo

Emotive · 2008–2010 · T. Boone Pickens

Pickens Plan

CRM, petition platform, live-streaming, social, email, and broadcast-aligned reporting for T. Boone Pickens’ self-funded national energy campaign — including the Super Bowl XLIII ad placement that drove the biggest sign-up day of the campaign.

$58M
self-funded media spend
3M+
Pickens Army members

Personal projects