Matt Kopac on Being Accountable to a Broader Community
“For me building community is about action. Yes, it’s powerful to have people that you can bare your soul to and connect with and help lift each other up when you’re struggling. But for me community also means bridging relationships into action — coming together around a shared purpose and trying to do something to benefit the place where we live and the people who live there.”
Matt is a champion of social and environmental justice with a lifelong commitment to service. Professionally, Matt is the Sustainable Business & Innovation Manager for Burt’s Bees, where it is his responsibility to ensure that the business supports people and the environment through product innovation, sustainable business practices, and community stewardship. As a co-founder of the Durham Living Wage Project and a past chair of the Durham City-County Environmental Affairs Board, Matt has been a strong local advocate for living wages, sustainable economic development and climate action. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Matt has taken on leadership roles to support food security, Black-owned business and digital equity for public school students. He’s also a 2012 Leadership Triangle Goodmon Fellow.
Kristine: I’m so grateful to be talking with you Matt. When did you go through your Leadership Triangle program?
Matt: So great to be talking with you, Kristine. I went through the Regional class two years after I relocated to the area. And it was at a great time to do it — not only was it really helpful in terms of building on my leadership journey and developing a network of inspiring leaders in the area, but it was also a terrific introduction to all the different local communities. I got to see how they all fit together as a whole, as a region, and to do a deep dive into different key issue areas: housing, transportation, agriculture, health care, mental health and more. It gave me a great baseline of relationships and an understanding of issues that are important to people’s lives here.
Kristine: So it was kind-of like a foundational introduction that gave you a sense of where you wanted to go in further.
Matt: Exactly.
Kristine: Matt, we’re talking on the morning of the day after Jacob Blake was shot by police officers in Kenosha, in the midst of a global pandemic. How are you doing?
Matt: These are stressful and personally, very emotionally taxing times on so many levels. We’re struggling like a lot of parents with kids at home and have family and friends who have gotten sick. That’s been tough.
Even harder is dealing with yet another chapter where we fail to fully live up to our ideals as a country. Black and Brown people didn’t just start dying from disease at higher rates like they are from COVID or facing harsher economic insecurity or being killed with impunity. This has always been the case, but this moment has made these realities even more visible. Being White means that the blunt force trauma of systemic racism in our society isn’t laid at my doorstep every day, but it still matters deeply to me to be a part of the solution.
At the same time, I’m really fortunate at a base level that I have an amazing partner to go through life with. I have the support of a parent — my mom, who is close by. My kids are healthy and Sarah and I have been able to stay employed. I don’t take this for granted.
But yeah, there’s a lot going on and it’s a process of absorbing and trying to respond to the racial justice issues and COVID issues right now. It’s all connected: COVID and racism. The spread of the pandemic and climate change. Climate change and racial justice issues. All these big issues all interrelated and it feels like it’s just this meld of trials right now for us as people and as a society that we have to figure out.
“It feels like through all the disruption we’re going through right now, it seems it’s really leading people to be more authentic, which helps movements ripple. I’m seeing much more honest conversation and willingness to engage in really difficult issues. And while conversation and engagement isn’t in and of itself the solution, it’s a precursor to it. So it actually makes me feel that things might actually change and we might have a breakthrough, which isn’t always something that I feel. I feel the potential in this moment.”
Kristine: What is giving you hope right now? It sounds like your relationships have been a grounding force.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely, and I have a lot of hope. For me, it’s been both local and global relationships. The people who I see and interact with every day, they give me hope and sustain me, because I see the level of daily effort that they are putting in to try and take care of their community and the people around them. I’m inspired every day by what I’m seeing in Durham, from people delivering meals to neighbors, supporting our teachers and vulnerable kids, and people getting out in the streets.
And then because I’ve had experiences working around the world and am in relationship with people, I have these global perspectives that give me hope, from West Africa to Central America, different parts of the United States and South Asia. I’m able to see through their eyes what’s happening. Like how global the Black Lives Matter movement has become, or how they are seeing firsthand the global youth climate uprisings of students. I’ve heard about places around the world that are handling the pandemic much better than we are and are returning back to normal. Seeing the resilience of people everywhere gives me a lot of hope.
Kristine: It sounds like you appreciate your local support system and then also the global imagination coming out in your other relationships. And seeing how movements ripple around the world.
Matt: Yes. And I’ll just add that it feels like through all the disruption we’re going through right now, it seems it’s really leading people to be more authentic, which helps movements ripple. I’m seeing much more honest conversation and willingness to engage in really difficult issues. And while conversation and engagement isn’t in and of itself the solution, it’s a precursor to it. So it actually makes me feel that things might actually change and we might have a breakthrough, which isn’t always something that I feel. I feel the potential in this moment.
Kristine: Absolutely. Showing up authentically is the only way we can really start to move towards the truth, which is also related to how we show up and lead in the workplace. Let’s get into you and your leadership journey. What have you learned about yourself and your leadership over time?
Matt: Something I’ve learned that is essential to leadership is that authenticity piece. Being willing to be vulnerable. Being empathetic with people in ways that build personal relationships. Getting proximate to the problem and to others and showing up with our full humanity — that’s the only way we’re really able to make progress. This is how I try to lead.
Another really critical part of leadership that I’ve learned is that it must be rooted in deeply held personal values and a willingness to put what you care about on the line through your actions. I think when people see you do that, it resonates because it shows authenticity — that you are willing to actually show up and do the work and commit yourself to the things that you say that you really care about.
The last thing I’ll add is that although we all really love charismatic leaders, I have learned that things don’t happen because of one or two people. I believe change happens because of people coming together as a team and deeply engaging and pushing and doing the work. That’s where our movements for justice actually originate and it’s why they can have a lasting impact.
Kristine: I hear threads of integrity and community in all of that. What does it mean for you to build community?
Matt: I grew up and graduated from high school in the same place. College was just down the road. I know what it means to be deeply, deeply rooted in a place. And now when I think of community, it’s the combination of people in place, who can show up in a real and everyday way for each other. There are a lot of ways we all may try and bring about change in the world, but I believe what matters most is what we do in the place where we are rooted with the people in our community.
I think a strong community strikes a balance between people who are really aligned with each other and people who have differences and disagreements. It can be too easy sometimes just to be in a place where, you know, everyone’s like you and everyone agrees with you. And so for me, I try and build community with people who are both like and unlike me, who agree with me and disagree with me. And I try to always learn, grow and allow myself to be changed.
Finally, for me building community is about action. Yes, it’s powerful to have people that you can bare your soul to and connect with and help lift each other up when you’re struggling. But for me community also means bridging relationships into action - coming together around a shared purpose and trying to do something to benefit the place where we live and the people who live there.
Kristine: So going based on our local community here — do you think it’s important to hold and instill a sense of regionalism across the communities of the Triangle?
Matt: It absolutely is. Everyone can have their local city or community pride, which I think is great. I know I have it for Durham. But ultimately, I see how much we really need each other in this regional community to be successful. In Durham, we talk a lot about the housing crisis and issues with transportation and income inequality. All of those things are real and important and are actually very regional in nature. People might live in Durham and work in Raleigh, or go to school in Apex and seek out healthcare in Chapel Hill. Especially as housing gets more and more expensive, people are being forced to live farther out and transportation connectivity becomes even more important. And so I think we’re much stronger when we maintain that identity as a regional community.
I also like that the Triangle as a region is a small enough scale that we can wrap our heads around it, yet big enough to impact the world. Yes we are North Carolinians and Americans and a part of the world, but I feel like our region is a scale we can comprehend and have relationships that bridge into action at a human scale.
I like seeing the collaboration among businesses, I like seeing the learning that happens across our local governments. There’s also, when you get a good idea, this idea that you want to spread it. And so it magnifies our impact if we take actions as a region. If we can do things regionally — take ambitious and necessary steps around racial justice, around climate action, around addressing the pandemic — that has the capacity to ripple outwards in a big way. What we do here matters.
Kristine: I really appreciate your point around doing work on a scale that is comprehensible for people. I think a lot about how our movements have to be fractal. adrienne maree brown says we have to practice at a small scale what we want to see at the big scale. I think if you can show viability at a small scale, it moves the conversation from the theoretical into the possible, and that’s actually massively important.
Matt: Kristine, we’re going to have to talk some more because now you’re throwing out fractals.
Kristine: Ha! We will. Thank you Matt.
Over the years, Matt has had a varied career with a common thread: service that reaches across boundaries. He has been the head of sustainability for a technology company in North Carolina, a consultant to high impact social enterprises fighting poverty in El Salvador, a community economic development policy advocate in Washington, DC, and a Small Enterprise Development Peace Corps Volunteer supporting women’s cooperatives and girls’ education in Benin, West Africa.
Matt has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in economics, international relations and political science and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. He was elected Student Body President at Yale and was the Student Director of the Yale Law School Community Economic Development Clinic, where he fought to keep people in their homes during the 2007–2009 mortgage foreclosure crisis.
Matt is an Eisenhower Fellow, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Forward Under 40 winner, and a Triangle Business Journal 40 Under 40 awardee. He is an avid international traveler, a student of cultures and languages, and a budding backyard beekeeper. Most of all, he is a proud partner to his wife and father to his two boys.
