Mat Willey
Program Manager

If Mat Willey was to serve as his own play-by-play announcer at a Des Moines Club rugby game, it might go like this:  “Yes, I’m in the middle of the Pack – it’s a ruck - shifting to a scrum and damn if I don’t love this game.”  Willey is back in Iowa for a while, playing rugby and working for SPPG as a Program Manager. 

Mat decided to get out of Industry (Industry, Illinois that is) and move to Iowa. Mat is a graduate of Central College in Pella where he majored in sociology and studied in London for a while.  He joined SPPG as an Adlai Stevenson Fellow; a distinctive intern program that allows Mat to simultaneously complete his graduate degree at Illinois State University. 

And he does play rugby.  And, as former a sports journalist, he can lay down a sports metaphor better than any NFL wannabee on Cable Channel 89. After college, Willey worked as a treatment counselor and staff writer and stringer covering sports throughout central Iowa. He returned to Normal (Normal, Illinois, that is) to study his true love – policy.  He joined SPPG in a part-time capacity and then as a full-time Fellow.

“Becoming a Stevenson Fellow means I have a doorway into someplace I couldn’t go otherwise, and working at SPPG is a wonderful step in the direction I wish to go.  Here, I get a chance to figure it out, to make change, and see how government can work better.”