Matt the Man

Although born in Wellington, Matt Bolger says he and the family spent time on their farm in Te Kuiti and also in Taranaki where father Jim was born.

When his father was appointed as Ambassador to the US, Matt also went and studied at Georgetown University which prides itself as the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, founded in the decade that the US Constitution was signed. It describes itself as a forward-looking, diverse community devoted to social justice, restless inquiry and respect for each person’s individual needs and talents. It was here that Bolger completed degrees in international business, English literature and Japanese. He also studied in Japan.

“When I finished my studies I was looking to stay and work for a period in the US before coming home to NZ, which was always the plan,” he says.

“So, I looked around at NZ companies and managed to get a job with Fonterra, which had just been formed and had set up a sales office in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. I was getting out on a plane or on the road every day visiting customers or on the phones or with the supply chain team moving product from NZ around the States.”

A year later Bolger was back in Fonterra’s head office in Auckland where for five years he worked in a range of roles in strategy then operations looking at commercialising technology.

Then he was posted to Chicago for another five years managing some global accounts to the US food sector. He was also running a number of Fonterra’s relationships with some of the global food companies that were headquartered in Chicago and who had sales teams all round the world.

“That was an amazing time because I was working with some great people on the customer side trying to create value for them and… for NZ,” he says.

Back in NZ at Fonterra, Bolger worked again on a wide variety of projects including environmental sustainability programmes, digital tools for farmers and different shareholding arrangements.