Matias has been a very active member of the Black Creek–Humber River Community for almost 20 years.
He started community organizing even before that while at university, where he helped to start and was President of the Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS) at the University of Toronto while a student there. This group is now located in many campuses across Ontario, over 25years later.
As an organizer, he has managed over a dozen political campaigns and has held several positions, elected and otherwise at different levels of politics. Over his career, Matias has received awards and recognitions from the national to the local grass roots level, from the King’s Coronation Medal, to student awards, to the Metcalf Foundation Toronto Skills Academy Fellowship, to the first ever CONOSER Community Award for distinguished community contributions and more.
Matias was elected to the Toronto District School Board as a Trustee in 2022 to represent Humber River-Black Creek. He is the first Latin American to be elected to the TDSB in over 25 years, since 1997. As a Trustee, he served as Vice-Chair to the Finance Committee for two years, as well as in ICCAC, PIAC and was Vice-Chair to the hiring committee for a new Director and helped to start a Taskforce on Latin/a/o/x Student Achievement.
Matias worked for many years at City Hall for Councillor Perruzza, as Chief of Staff more recently. Before that, he worked as the first Executive Director for the DUKE Heights BIA for four years, an award winning business improvement area, where he developed first of their kind programs in sector development, employment supports and communications, with partnerships with organizations such as Osgoode Hall Law School and the Metcalf Foundation. Through his work at City Hall and the BIA, Matias has brought in projects to the area in the tens of millions of dollars. These include projects to rebuild green spaces and parks, public realm improvements, public art projects, public roads, public sewers, exercise pods in parks, adding new playgrounds, rebuilding libraries, rebuilding utility infrastructure and more. He also had significant impact in organizing around youth and children’s programs.
Matias has personally supervised academic and volunteer placements for over 100 youth over his career. He has also created youth programs for hundreds of youths and through organizations and programs he has helped to start, he has helped to create opportunities for thousands of children and youths. These include programs and events where kids have received free bikes, laptops, backpacks and more, as well as lunch programs and breakfast programs in different schools in the area, bursaries and scholarships.
He graduated from the University of Toronto with a double major in Political Science and Ibero-American Studies and from the University of Alberta with a Masters in Political Science Theory and will be soon doing a second Masters at the Department of Sociology at York University.
Matias was born in Uruguay and immigrated to Canada in 1991 with his family at a young age.
