Matt Forrest: Building Maps, Breaking Barriers

“I love working on problems you don’t know the outcome to,” says Matt Forrest, reflecting on a career that has spanned everything from hand-drawn transit maps to cutting-edge geospatial engineering. “You just have to jump in the deep end.”

Today, Matt is the VP of Solution Engineering at CARTO, a leading platform in location intelligence. But his journey didn’t start with slick dashboards and cloud-based analytics. It began in the early 2010s, when the geospatial world was shifting rapidly from desktop tools to open-source, web-first environments. Armed with a degree in human geography and a passion for design, Matt entered the field during this transition—and decided to ride the wave rather than resist it.

“I was always intrigued by programming,” he says. “Back then it was ActionScript and Flash… Google Mashups were the thing. I knew I had to figure it out.” And so, he did—teaching himself new tools, learning SQL and JavaScript, and eventually landing at CARTO in 2015.

Matt’s version of GIS—what he calls “modern GIS”—is more than software. It’s a mindset. “Geospatial is the ecosystem: the people, the community, the processes. GIS is the system that turns that into insight,” he explains. To him, it’s about building bridges: between disciplines, between datasets, and most importantly, between people.

It’s also deeply personal. “I ask a lot of dumb questions,” Matt laughs. “That’s how I learned—by Googling things, breaking stuff, and talking to smarter people who were patient with me.” That vulnerability built not just his technical skills, but his leadership style. At CARTO, he encourages his team to get uncomfortable, to experiment, and to learn through failure.

“If something doesn’t work, that’s okay. The best way to learn is to start.”

Still, doubt has played a role in his growth. In 2015, he knew the theory behind geospatial systems, but he wanted to truly do the work—write code, scale databases, build full-stack apps.

“There were days I spent hours on one small thing. But then you get that aha moment and realize, I can do this.”

That passion—combined with humility—is why Matt’s influence now reaches far beyond his own team. On LinkedIn and YouTube, he shares tutorials, tools, and encouragement for others trying to find their place in the evolving geospatial world. “There’s this jack-of-all-trades pressure. People think they have to be a GIS analyst, a data engineer, a front-end dev. You don’t. You just need to define your path and know what you’re good at.”

Matt’s message is clear: you don’t have to know everything to get started—you just have to be willing to learn.

“There’s no roadmap. I just said, here’s my way. Maybe it helps someone else find theirs.”