As a technical systems-builder, Matt Van Itallie is passionate about problems that are hard and problems that matter. He co-founded Sema Technologies Inc., which he currently leads as CEO, to help organizations drive better outcomes through their software.
Sema’s flagship solution, Comprehensive Codebase Scans, has earned a reputation as the leading codebase scanning tool for the technical due diligence process. Having evaluated more than $1T in value for leading private equity firms and enterprise M&A teams, Sema has built one of the most comprehensive datasets to provide actionable suggestions to engineering organizations. With this foundation, Matt is leading the development of the AI Code Monitor, which helps engineering organizations increase developer productivity and address the regulatory risks of generative AI code.
Matt’s interest in technology began in his childhood. The son of a computer programmer and a computer programmer turned mathematician, code was a part of his upbringing. At a young age, he developed an interest in logic, data, and information systems. His experience as a Boy Scout and ultimately an Eagle Scout taught him invaluable lessons, in particular a commitment to the civic good and the importance of “leaving campgrounds better than you found them.”
Matt graduated with High Honors from Swarthmore College and then with honors from Harvard Law School. He spent his early years consulting to public and private sector institutions including a stint as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey. He left management consulting to serve in urban school system reform, focused on operational improvements to deliver better outcomes for students. Matt served as Baltimore City Public Schools’ Chief Accountability Officer, where he built analytics systems to support educational reform initiatives for a $1.2B school district with 80,000 students.
Following his work in school reform, Matt worked in edtech and human services software companies backed by a leading private equity firm. There he developed a passion for engineering metrics that were understandable to tech and non-tech audiences, and for improving non-functional requirements of codebases to help organizations deliver better outcomes. Matt believes that human-machine relationships are one of the most pressing issues of our time. In his work, he sees a clear connection between the advancement of Generative AI and the empowerment of engineers to improve outcomes.
When he’s not building the AI Code Monitor or thinking about code as data and CTO dashboards, Matt enjoys hiking with his wife, cooking with his kids, and throwing dinner parties to bring diverse minds together.
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