Matt Shepherd
Matt Shepherd has spent his adult life serving Kiwis — and now he wants to get to know the people of the Wairarapa.
Growing up in Lower Hutt, Matt's early passion for cooking led him to his first career: At 17 he moved to Auckland and spent the next six years as a chef in the Royal New Zealand Navy. He served aboard some of New Zealand's most storied vessels, including an Antarctic voyage on HMNZS Otago (penguins are hilarious up close!) and multinational exercises aboard HMAS Canberra during RIMPAC. The Navy gave him discipline, resilience, and a foundation he still draws on today.
Ready for change though, Matt moved to Thailand, where he spent several years teaching at a public high school in Nakhon Phanom. Immersed in a different culture, he shed the rigidity of a younger self and developed a understanding of people whose lives and values looked nothing like his own. That experience is what brought him home and into teaching.
He returned to New Zealand and studied education at the University of Waikato in Tauranga, qualifying as a primary school teacher. From there he took a posting in Fox Glacier. Remote, rural, and far from anything familiar, he connected with communities and people who continued to broaden his understanding of what New Zealand actually looks like beyond the main centres. Right now, he balances relief teaching across the Hutt Valley with campaigning and dating. To date he has worked in over 30 schools across New Zealand.
Matt is standing in Wairarapa not because it's convenient, but because he goes where he's needed. After years in classrooms, he's tired of watching children be let down by a system more interested in managing liability and trying to tick every box over genuinely engaging with kids. After watching an increasing politicization of education, that he feels often reduces teachers to administrators and children to a monolith, he decided that simply complaining wasn't enough. It was time to do something.
When he's not teaching or campaigning, you'll find Matt rowing on the Petone waterfront, running to clear his head, cooking something delicious for friends and family, or playing Magic: The Gathering at his local hobby shop.
Matt knows we can do better for our children and build a better future for all Kiwis!
