Able to fire up any room with his fun-loving nature and his passion for argument, Matt Wiltshire could never be accused of being a homebody. But unable to shake the siren’s call of his beloved Nashville, he found home was just where he belonged, using the skills he’d gained while away to make things better for the people living there. Find out how making things better is all the sweeter in a place that you love.
Guest Matt Wiltshire, Dartmouth '96, grew up in Nashville in a family that was active in politics and in serving the community around them in a variety of ways. Ever the fiery, argumentative one, Matt went to college to study government and thought law school was in his future. Thinking he’d save a little money before law school, he followed in the shoes of senior year roommate and went into investment banking. He hadn’t intended to make it into a fifteen-year career but the idea of sticking with smart people working on interesting problems led to opportunity after opportunity, city to city.
Finally, he found a banking opportunity that brought him home to Nashville. He loved the work, but he found himself being pulled into community development work with local not-for-profits boards and community committees and found a desire to do more of that. When an opening appeared within the mayor’s office of economic development, he knew he would be an unlikely candidate. But luckily they recognized that the skills he had gained while he was gone, married with the love he had for the city, would make Matt the perfect person to try to expand opportunities for Nashville and his fellow citizens.
In this episode, find out from Matt how making things better is all the sweeter in a place that you love…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Matt Wiltshire is a proud son of Nashville, Tennessee, doing all he can to build and strengthen the city he loves. After a fifteen year career in investment banking, he finally turned to public service, becoming the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development under multiple mayors. He is currently Chief Strategy and Intergovernmental Affairs Officer at Nashville’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Matt Wiltshire: I had the opportunity to work with a lot of great people who gave me some great opportunities, and it was just sort of a situation where one opportunity led to the next. And so it was not ever 'OK, I'm not going to do this other path.' It was more 'man, this is a great challenge.' It was following that path of opportunities that led me to where I ended up.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Able to fire up any room with his fun loving nature and his passion for argument, Matt Wiltshire could never be accused of being a homebody. But unable to shake the siren call of his beloved Nashville, he found that home gave opportunity to use the skills he'd gained while away to make things better for the people living there. Find out how making things better is all the sweeter in a place that you love on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
So today I'm here with Matt Wiltshire and we are going to talk about ambitions and paths that meander and bring us home, but always in kind of service of service. So...
MW: I'm inspired already. I can't wait to hear this podcast after it's recording.
LJR: Great. So it's lovely to be with you.
MW: And you. Thanks for inviting me to be a part of this.
LJR: So, Matt, we start the podcast with the same two questions. And I'm going to ask them of you. When you got to college, who were you. And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you were going to become?
MW: You know, it's funny. I think I am probably still the same person I was in seventh grade in all the good ways and bad ways were probably a whole separate podcast that could be done on the psychology of that. But yeah, I actually feel fairly much the same way as I did then in terms of what's important to me, what my priorities are, where I thought I'd be. So this may be another one of your less interesting podcasts in terms of the roads taken, because mine sort of led back to where I thought it would, although there have been some interesting twists and turns along the way. But but when I went to college, I thought that I would likely go to law school, which I did not do. But I've always been interested in public service. And and that's and that's where I've ended up.
LJR: Yeah, so I knew you in the early days of your college career, and I saw someone who had been steeped in a family tradition and community tradition of being really engaged politically, which was definitely not my upbringing. And I admired that in you because you really did kind of speak to the fact that you were going to do good and that you... I actually thought you were going to be a Senator or more and kind of really go that kind of elected official kind of route. And and when we see that there are different ways to serve and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But I also know that when you left, that is not what you did. And you went a different way. And some of us might have raised an eyebrow or two. So tell me about really what happened that and what the thought process was for, like this opportunity after Dartmouth. Like what happened then?
MW: Sure I think at times it's easy to rewrite the narrative of your path in a way that conforms to a more well thought out narrative. But in fact, as you referenced when I graduated from college, ended up going to work in investment banking, ended up doing that for 15 years, investment banking and venture capital. And I really enjoyed that work. What I really enjoyed about it was working with smart people on interesting and creative ideas, fast paced, competitive. And I loved it. I got to work in San Francisco for a couple of years. Was a great city to live in. Got to work in New York for seven or eight years, which I enjoyed very much, New York and Connecticut, and then came home and continued to do investment banking here in Nashville for four or five years. And along the way, did some investing venture capital and private equity investing and really enjoyed that work, which is really interesting. And challenging. And and so it was it was great in that regard. But I think it also did afford me the opportunity to think about different ways of solving problems and in particular, think about market forces, think about unintended consequences. And a lot of things that I think in a popular, particularly capitalist critique of government, things that government doesn't often think about. And so I think at the end of the day, it has brought me a perspective and skill set that I found to be pretty useful in public service. But the short answer is, Jamie Hunter is the reason I got into investment banking. He was my roommate my senior year in college, and I thought that I wanted to go work for a couple of years to save some money for law school. And Jamie went into investment banking. So I went into investment banking and was lucky enough to land a great job with a firm called Montgomery securities, which later, I bought out in San Francisco. And then that launched this career that went on for 15 years across three cities.
LJR: And at what point in there did you realize, OK, I'm no longer saving up for law school?
MW: You know, there wasn't a particular moment. I think what was lucky about the situation that I got into. And I think this podcast may be more oriented towards later career folks, but if there are any current college students who are thinking about careers, who take a listen to this. What I would say is go work at the best place that you can with the smartest people that you can in the most challenging way that you can, and then work your rear end off. And I had the opportunity to work with a lot of great people who gave me some great opportunities. And it was just sort of a situation where one opportunity led to the next. And so it was not ever 'OK, I'm not going to do this other path.' It was more 'man, this is a great challenge.' And, oh, you know, here's an opportunity to go work on something really interesting and challenging. And so it was following that path of opportunities that led me sort of led me to where I ended up.
LJR: Yeah but there was at least some intentionality in the move back to Nashville. So kind of talk about that.
MW: And yeah, so so I always thought I wanted to live in Nashville. I joke with folks that I love Nashville, like some people love the Grateful Dead. It is just an irrational obsession. Nashville obviously doesn't have beach weather. Doesn't have the mountains. But it is a great place with great people. And it's a place that I love very much. And is very meaningful to me. So, yes, it was an intentional move back to Nashville to get back home. My sister lived here, my parents lived here, and it was a good opportunity for me to get back to Nashville and found a good, good job continuing to work in financial services. And so I enjoyed that move. That that move was intentional, as was the next move, the move into public service, which is a little bit of an interesting story. So I mentioned that I was doing some venture capital investing, was actually working for a state sponsored venture capital fund separate from Avondale partners, the firm that I was at the time. I was on the board of three or four non-profits. I had started a public policy and politics discussion group that met monthly, was married, had two kids at the time, was doing too many things. And was probably doing none of them well and had a bit of an existential moment about, you know, what is it that I enjoy in this work. I enjoyed the work that I was doing, the investment banking and venture capital, I enjoy that work, but I keep doing all these other things that non-profits and public policy...that clearly there's something pulling me in that direction. And there was a sort of existential moment. And literally at that moment, and this is where happenstance or luck plays in, there's an email I got from Nashville Post, a local news source that said 'Mayor's Chief Leaves to Join the State' and the person who had the role of director of economic and community development under then Mayor Dean had gone to be governor Haslam's communications director. And I didn't know what ECD stood for, much less what the job was. But as I looked into it a little bit, economic and community development sounded like the combination of what I had been doing professionally, working on business deals, with what I was clearly drawn to in public policy and public service. And so I just called a friend who worked in the mayor's office and said, this is a little bit out of left field, but I'd love to come talk to you guys about this. And he said, yes, that's totally out of left field, but you should talk to this person. And so I came in and asked for the job and ultimately was able to get it. And that really has been, it was a professional joy for me, the people who I had to work with and the opportunities I got to have.
LJR: Yeah and that was a long a long stint, right?
MW: It was, yes. So that was in 2011 was right before Carl Dean was re-elected to his second term. And so I served out his second term from 11 to 15. And then the next mayor elected Megan Barry asked me to stay on in that role, which I did, was excited to do. She then ended up leaving office, but her successor, David Briley, asked me to stay on. So I served out his term. So I actually ended up staying there for eight years under three different mayors before making my next professional move.
LJR: Yeah, but in that time, before that move, like that role, really, as you said, took kind of the best from professional vocational and kind of what you love to do all in service of this town you love so much. And I think that was a period where really, like, I don't know, I kept attributing it all to you. Like, you see new festivals come in, you'd see new businesses come in. That was the kind of thing that you were doing to grow economic opportunity for the people of Nashville and the greater region, I would imagine, as well.
MW: So, yeah, I mean, there was tremendous success. I mean, look, timing in life is critically important. But I think it was a situation where the administration in place at the time, met the moment in a really special way. And so there was a tremendous amount of success that Nashville had at the time. I think there are some lessons learned that we can talk about later here. But I think that there was a lot of success. Nashville was sort of at that moment where it had been sort of passed over, looked over. There had always been great things about Nashville, some as basic as central time zone and three interstates intersecting in Nashville. But some more important ones, like before Nashville is known as Music city, was known as the Athens of the South. There are 20 colleges and universities in the greater Nashville area. 120,000 students, 26-27,000 graduates each year. And that talent pipeline was really important for businesses. And once folks started looking at that, and saw no state income tax, favorable business environment, businesses really got excited about moving to Nashville. There was just tremendous success. So in those eight years, the unemployment rate fell from 8.1% to 2.0%. And I was not an economics major, but took a couple economics classes. And recollection is that the floor was that unemployment couldn't go below 5% because there's just a natural level. And so there was a lot of success in the city. Wages grew and there were great opportunities in the city at the time. And so I think, you know, there was also a lot of growth. And there can be growing pains to a fast changing, fast evolving city. But but there certainly was a lot of excitement. And companies like AllianceBernstein and Amazon moved there; Lyft opened its first office outside of the Bay Area. And so it was a real interesting mix of businesses that were opening up offices in Nashville. And that's really changed the job landscape there, which has been great for the city.
LJR: Yeah And so kind of riding that success, but knowing there were other opportunities to make some of that kind of monumental change or even tiny change that would help a lot of people, you took a different role.
MW: Yeah, I mean, this was I referenced earlier that there are challenges and unintended consequences. And I think one of the challenges of all the growth was rapidly rising. Housing costs. Look like any other good, it's an issue of supply and demand. And the there were more people moving to Nashville at higher wages than there were new housing units being built, particularly housing units that were affordable to folks at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. And so so there was a real affordability issue, as there was in many urban cities across the country. But it was even just more accelerated in Nashville because of the growth dynamics of the city. And so when you attract Amazon to move part of their second headquarters to Nashville and when you attract AllianceBernstein, you sort of look around you're like I think we've kind of done what we can do in terms of the job piece of that. I worked with then mayor Briley to develop a $750 million affordable housing program that we proposed. And as a part of that effort, I moved over to MDHA, which is metropolitan development, housing agency, which is the public housing authority in Nashville, to help execute a piece of that. And MHDA, and there could be a whole podcast just on this, but MDHA had taken advantage of a change in HUD policy. Before sort of 2012, all of the public housing in all the United States was owned by Department of Housing and Urban Development, and they would pay a subsidy to local public housing authorities to operate those, but they owned the buildings in the dirt. The Obama administration had something called RAD-rental assistance demonstration project, whereby the local house could take ownership of the buildings and did that. So they own all the land on all the buildings and initiated a redevelopment proposal for roughly half of the units that MDHA owns that were located in six sites sort of around the core of downtown. And the plan is to replace the existing housing on a one for one basis, actually a little bit more than one for one--1.2 for one--to expand the number of HUD subsidized units that are affordable to low income individuals. But to when you rebuild, to do that in a mixed income way. So that it's 40% of the units are these low income units, 20% of what we call workforce that are income restricted to folks making between 80% and 120% of area median income. And then 40% are just market rate. And so the idea is you're evolving these areas of concentrated poverty into mixed income, mixed use neighborhoods that will have, we think, better health outcomes, better educational outcomes, better job opportunities, lower crime, better serve the residents who are there and do it in a mixed income way. And so I moved over to MDHA to be a part of that redevelopment initiative that MDHA was working on.
LJR: And I know you haven't been there that long, but is there any evidence that this is working or we will well see it work?
MW: Yeah, the early results are actually quite affirming. So we are still very early. I mentioned, there are six sites. The largest the first one we started working on is actually the largest. It's Cayce, which is over in East Nashville, and we are probably 35% of the way through the process of redeveloping cases. There's still a long way to go. And when I say 35 percent, many of the buildings just opened literally this year, January 1 opened, February 1 opened. We've got another one that's going to open up here in another month or so. So it's still very early. But the rents that we've been able to generate from the market rate units have exceeded our performance. So economically, it's performing. We've been able to attract people to these units, which has been reassuring. And most importantly, I think for the residents who and I should say, and this is most important, we made a commitment that no resident would be displaced through this process. So we're doing a slow and gradual way where the existing residents move into the new units as they're built. And so they aren't you know, we're not tearing apart the social fabric. And this whole plan was developed with the residents. And there was a lot of skepticism. I mean, it's no secret to anyone listening to this podcast that governments and private institutions have made lots of promises to lots of people that have not come true. And that have had lots of unintended consequences. And so there was a lot of skepticism about the innovation process. And I think probably one of the biggest signs of the success thus far is the incredible resident buy into it. I mean, residents believe in what we're doing. And there's always criticism, it's always constructive criticism about how things can be done better. But but the resident buy-in is one important signal. And then the second is that crime has dropped by about 40% in the neighborhood since this redevelopment process started. And it's not just because of the redevelopment. I think we're working better with police and more neighborhood and community policing efforts that have made a big difference. But but I think it is not a surprise to hear that when a city invests in a community, that community takes ownership and things improve is when people feel ignored, feel neglected, don't feel hope for better opportunities, that things really start to go awry.
LJR: Yeah Yeah. So my guess is you'll be here for a while to see the fruits of those labors see themselves out, but what in the larger scale, like I'm serving this town or doing service in general, like I'm sure you have lots of kids now and you're kind of serving all kinds of things. But how do you think about what, either what the future is or how you round out this kind of public service with everything else you do?
MW: Sure I mean, so if this is the last job. So I should say this will be a time stamp on this conversation. Our executive director has announced he's retiring and moving on. So we are actually in a search for a new executive director. So we'll see we'll see who that person is and whether the person wants to continue the initiatives that we're undertaking now. So I could be gone in a few months and looking for a new gig. But if this is the last job that I have, I think I will feel very excited about the contributions that I've been able to make to my city, work in finance, sell the city. I love for eight years, and then and then work on redeveloping housing and improving the lives for four residents in Nashville, particularly low income residents. That would be a great career if that's what it ends up being. But elected office is still something that if the timing is right. And if the opportunities are right, it's something that I think I'd want to consider that, you know, I love this city. And I think there are some great opportunities to continue to improve and make an impact. And in a broader way. And if that opportunity presents itself, it's certainly something I'd want to consider.
LJR: Yeah Yeah. So what have I not asked you that I should ask you about the whole road, the whole journey from being a 20-year-old to now?
MW: You know, I think someone listening to this podcast is probably looking for inspiration or at least an interesting lesson learned. And I feel so fortunate. I guess what I would say is go work with the best people that you can, even if it's not necessarily in a career or a particular line of work. Just getting to work with really smart people and working on interesting, challenging things tends to present a lot of opportunities. And for me, that's made all the difference. Being able to work with people who I really admire and I've learned a lot from, it's been a great blessing for me.
LJR: And by the way, who were you as a seventh grader?
MW: You know, I think I was still a excited, happy, optimistic, aggressive, fun loving person who, you know, wanted to go serve the city.
LJR: Yeah Yeah. Well, I think you are still that all of those things, fun loving and youthful, probably tops among those. And I just wish you the best. And I, I think Nashville's all the richer to have you back home and may you have many, many more years in that city.
MW: Well, thank you. That means a lot that it's great to reconnect with you. And congratulations on this podcast. I think it's a great gift to a lot of people who are out there trying to figure out what path is the right one for them. And I think just getting to walk on the path is a pretty exciting thing to. Right just the path itself is the joy, the journey.
LJR: Exactly well, Thanks again.
MW: You bet.
LJR: That was Matt Wiltshire, a proud son of Nashville, Tennessee, doing all he can to build and strengthen the city he loves. After a 15-year career in investment banking, he finally turned to public service, becoming the director of the mayor's office of economic and community development under multiple mayors. He's currently chief strategy and Intergovernmental Affairs officer at Nashville's metropolitan development and housing agency. This show is about reconnecting with old friends and making new ones and learning about the million different ways we can create meaningful lives for ourselves. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your podcast and tell a friend about us. Point them to RoadsTakenShow.com or have them tune in to hear another friend with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on the next episode of Roads Taken.