Dr. Matthew E. Tolentino

    Matthew Tolentino, a man who has worn many different hats in his life, who can talk a big game but more importantly, he can back it up. When I walked into the auditorium where Matt had just finished setting up for his presentation, the impression that I got was that he was a laid-back man who had nothing to prove, with a relaxed posture and casual clothing it sent the message of being comfortable and familiar with his surroundings. There where however subtle signs if you knew where to look to tell that he cared about his product and enjoyed teaching people, his appearance was well maintained, he stood in front of his prototypes angled slightly towards them while at the same time keeping himself between the audience and the prototypes and never straying too far from them, I would hazard the guess that most of that was not an explicitly done. I had learned from my professor when he was telling us about the upcoming guest that, Matt worked with the fire department but that was the limit of my knowledge.

    After introducing himself Matt told us a bit about how he has gotten to his current place in life, what he said left me taken aback a bit. After graduating high school early he became a professional figure skater working with companies such as Disney on ice. After that, he bounced around different places, he worked for the pentagon for a while, tech companies, and went to school and walked away with a Ph.D. When he discussed his past, he seemed to accept the past, he didn’t go into any complaints or any specifics, he was matter of fact about his past, not due to not caring or having passion but simply because while it made him who he was, but he didn’t feel a need to prove something a better way to phrase it may be that he seemed to have excepted himself. Matt is certainly not a showoff, nor was he conceited, arrogant, or too full of himself.

    When it comes to what he taught and what lessons he was emphatic about the ones that stand out the most are not taking on more than one thing at a time, don’t go into a business that you don’t enjoy working on, be persistent, most of all though is having boundaries in life for things such as family, what you take home, deadlines, how far you’re willing to go before calling it quits. One of the things I thought was awesome is how he would just go to the airport and go on a vacation when he needed a break to keep from burning out. Turning off his phone when he sees family, keeping a schedule, and making himself take breaks no matter what was going on. As he said there will always be another emergency or disaster to fix.

    When it comes to his business, I found myself not only intrigued but full of different ideas. Every idea I had he had done or thought of already, not only is he an innovative out of the box thinker, but he follows up and puts effort into everything. In his company Namatad which is data man backward, funnily enough, he mostly discussed his firefly project, which is for firefighters, his program helps to track the locations of firefighters in buildings so that they can get help when needed, this is a huge problem that takes many lives around the world. When it comes to coming up with an idea he said looking around and identifying the problems was the first step.

    Though I could go into more specifics and more details I think the most important things since creating a business is different for everyone. What makes him so successful is debatable though I would say some of the most important things were, being flexible and adaptable, setting up boundaries between work and personal life, and finally persistence drive and the sheer amount of energy and effort to keep working even when it is hard and you don’t want to get out of bed.