Matt Smith — Founder & Executive Director
Matt Smith
Matt has spent his career at the intersection of public service and community development. As a leader with the City of Draper, he developed a deep understanding of what it takes to build programs that serve real people with real needs — not programs that look good on paper and disappear when the grant money runs out.
His work in local government taught him that the communities with the strongest social fabric are the ones where people do hard things together — whether that’s building something, governing something, or standing in a river at 6 AM trying to land a fish.
Matt founded Teach a Human to Fish after recognizing that the city’s most valuable asset — its wild outdoor landscape — was largely inaccessible to the young people and men who needed it most. TAHF is his answer to that gap: a nonprofit that builds bridges between people and water, and between people and each other.
When he’s not running clinics or chasing sponsors, Matt is most likely on the Provo River, probably losing flies in the trees and lying about it later.
The mountain painting above is Matt’s own work — oil on canvas. It hangs in his studio. We think it says something about the man.
