Matthew Manos, MFA

Matthew Manos, MFA is an artist, strategist, and author interested in experimental economies and conditional systems for creative inquiry. He is the Founder and Managing Partner/Global Strategy Lead at verynice, a design, strategy, and foresight consultancy that gives half of its work away for free to nonprofit organizations.
 
As of 2015, verynice has been able to gift over $3,000,000 worth of pro-bono design and consulting services across 45 countries to benefit hundreds of organizations thanks largely to a volunteer staff of 350 practitioners. Now with offices in Austin, Los Angeles, and New York, the company is on track to donate $10,000,000+ in pro-bono services by 2020. In 2014, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recognized verynice for the company’s unparalleled commitment to pro-bono service for local nonprofit organizations. Notable clients of verynice have included UNICEF, NASA, MTV Networks, NRDC, Edison International, Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Kaiser Permanente, and Disney Imagineering.
 
Named one of “Seven Millennials Changing the World” by The Huffington Post, Matthew’s work and ideas have also been published in 250+ print and online venues internationally including Forbes, The Guardian, Wired, Boing Boing, Inc, GOOD, and MTV. In 2013, the Taproot Foundation awarded verynice with the Golden Root Award for leadership in the pro-bono movement alongside a humbling group of businesses which included Disney, Deloitte, and Union Bank. He is the author of How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free, an internationally distributed documentation of verynice’s 50% pro-bono business model and the subsequent “Give Half Movement” that has attracted 7,500 readers across 2,000 cities.
 
He is also the creator of Models of Impact, an interactive map that has attracted over 5,000 users and aims to document every business model in social enterprise. Over the course of his career, Matthew has lead over 100 workshops and speaks regularly at events and institutions across the United States including an influential TEDx talk at Carnegie Mellon in 2012 titled Reinterpreting the Role of a Designer and an additional TEDx talk in 2014 for Johnson & Johnson delivered at the Penn Museum titled Imagining the Potential of ‘FREE’ — a presentation that has served as a catalyst to accelerate J&J’s own pro-bono initiatives.
 
With 10 years of experience, Matthew is a trusted advisor and has been a mentor to hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives, and young designers from around the world. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the California College of Art’s Design MBA Program, and an Adjunct Faculty Member at the Art Center College of Design where he has taught and co-taught courses in business, career development, and entrepreneurship. Representative of his passion for connecting the fields of design and business, he pioneered the first class on entrepreneurship in the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture in 2012, where he lead the course for 2 years.
 
He currently holds 8 board and advisory council memberships including AIGA Los Angeles, The Taproot Foundation in Los Angeles, The Chill Foundation of Burton Snowboards, Createathon, Dreamland NYC, filmanthropos, The $100 Solution, and Youth Leadership America. He has been a mentor for Code for America since 2012, and is also a Pro-Bono Champion for A Billion+ Change and Points of Light. Every once in a while, when no one is looking, he coauthors an experimental poetry zine known as FUTURE TACO, works on editing his first fiction novel, and skateboards. He lives in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District with his awesome wife, Kate.
 
Matthew earned his BA in Design Media Arts at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2010. He earned his MFA in Media Design Practices at Art Center College of Design in 2012.
 
Watch Matthew Manos at ADC StartUP — “Business as a Medium for Design”. View his Facebook page. Read his LinkedIn profile. View his Instagram page. Follow his Twitter feed.