![[Matt's ugly mug]](images/head_new.jpg)
I'm going to drop out and become a super-hero. By night I will wear tights and arrest criminals in Scarborough. By day I will be the Rosedale gentleman. I will never forget Valentine's Day, birthdays, or the colour of someone's eyes. I will cry at the opera. I will speak five languages, drink only wine and champagne, and work out two hours every day but never talk about it. I will play piano and memorise passages of the bible even though I am agnostic. Though women will love me, my only true companion will be the night.
Mark Ambachtsheer, on the PMC white board
I was born and raised in southern Ontario, where my parents gave me a Christian name and upbringing, although only one of those managed to stick. I enjoyed and was good at math in high school, and so lacking any better ideas, attended the University of Waterloo, leaving in 2000 with a B. Math but bored of the discipline.
After graduation, I took a few months to catch up on my reading before doing full-time volunteer work for a while. To pay the rent, I accepted a contract to work for two community centres in Kitchener doing social work and community development. I liked this, and went on to learn Spanish and work with an NGO in El Salvador on a CIDA internship for half a year, then returned and wrote grant proposals for a little longer. I left that in fall 2002 to take up coding again, mostly through Openflows, a small consulting firm based in NYC. In 2004, having fallen in love with an old friend, I followed her to Montréal and learnt French. We moved in together in summer 2006, and live a happy, dorky life together. In 2010, I started working for Koumbit Networks, a Montreal-based nonprofit which makes websites primarily for other nonprofit organizations.
alumni
uwaterloo