Matthew Goodson Email and Phone Number

I've worked designing smart toilets, smart towel heaters, meat smokers, hand powered water well drills (that can be flown to developing countries in checked luggage), vaccine carriers that can keep medicines cool for weeks at a time without power, etc etc. I've spent the last 5 years working hard to turn myself into a product development specialist. I've worked for a couple of startups, done several humanitarian engineering projects for the developing world, and now I've taken the plunge into a double masters program at Brigham Young University (MS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA). My engineering studies are focused on improving the design process through effective communication of expectations between designers and stakeholders. I think that study is helping me be more effective as a leader, since communication of expectations is so critical in pretty much any team. My studies of business are opening up a whole new world to me, and I'm learning to speak a new language which will enable me to serve as bridge between designers and the businessmen that hire them. I realized that I really want to be in control of the development process. I don't want to optimize parts of a massive system over and over again, I want to be the guy talking to consumers, talking to marketing, talking to operations, and then reconciling all of that information into a life changing product. I'd say that some of my greatest strengths as a designer are keeping a teams focus on solving the root problem the customer has, having foresight and being thorough enough to see problems before they become problems, as well as an ability to really dig deep into the prior art in order to know the stat of the art and how to advance it. As a leader I think my strengths are centered around having compassion and really caring for the people I work with, being able to help teams laugh their way through setbacks, and again, helping teams constantly refocus on the root problems at hand.