Matthew Van Epps
For September, we are happy to feature Matthew Van Epps who was a Fellow 20 years ago! We’re lucky to have some photos of him from the conference. Please enjoy and read his profile below.
Left: Van Epps at the conference. Right: David Abshire speaking to a group of cadets with Van Epps in the middle.
What are you doing now?
Since completing the Presidency Fellowship and graduating from West Point in 2005, I served in the U.S. Army as an Aviation Officer and helicopter pilot flying AH-64D Apache and MH-47G Chinook helicopters with combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. This included an assignment to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR/Night Stalkers), which brought me to Tennessee. After leaving active duty, I completed a fellowship in Washington, D.C. with Senator Grassley's office, worked in several small businesses in Tennessee, and served in Tennessee State Government in the departments of Veterans Services and Transportation, on the COVID-19 Unified Command Group, and in the Office of Governor Bill Lee as deputy chief operating officer. I am leaving consulting in the private sector and returning to state government after being appointed by Governor Lee to lead the TN Department of General Services as commissioner starting on October 1, 2024. I am also still serving my state and country in the Tennessee Army National Guard as a Lieutenant Colonel.
How has the Fellowship impacted your career?
While I was a Fellow 20 years ago, there have been lasting impacts with goal setting and balancing priorities aimed at an objective. I recognized that being selected as a Fellow from a stringent process at West Point among highly qualified applicants meant setting a goal and working relentlessly to accomplish it through two mutually supporting approaches. First, doing well academically, particularly in the Department of Social Sciences, and, second, through extracurriculars that would boost my resume and provide networking opportunities. These, coupled with interview preparation and a positive attitude, resulted in my acceptance to the CSPC Fellowship. I use this same framework of goal setting, preparation, and networking today to build teams and accomplish organizational objectives.
What is your favorite memory of the Fellowship?
It was great to explore presidential leadership with undergraduate peer colleagues from other universities while in Washington, D.C. I remember pitching my paper's concept (comparing the foreign policy vision and rhetoric of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush) to a group of Fellows and getting excellent (and critical) feedback that I incorporated into the paper's final version. The interaction with leading scholars, government officials, and the graduation banquet (I sat next to astronaut Buzz Aldrin - amazing!) was really great too.
If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?
I am so excited to be starting a job with an incredible team at the Tennessee Department of General Services to support other state agencies and Tennesseans. In the future, maybe President of the United States of America (I mean, this is the CSPC Fellowship!).