Rural Assembly welcomes Madeline Matson as new director
Madeline Matson has joined the Rural Assembly team as its new director. A lifelong resident of Washington state, Matson has spent most of her life and career focused on building community within rural and leading small nonprofit organizations, most recently as director of the Executive Director of the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco, Washington.
Matson succeeds longtime Rural Assembly director Whitney Kimball Coe, who remains with the Assembly’s parent organization, the Center for Rural Strategies, in a different capacity while pursuing a call to ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.
“Madeline has been a longtime friend, collaborator, and mentor of mine in the rural advocacy field,” Kimball Coe said. “I am so excited for this next chapter in the life of the Assembly.”
Q&A with Madeline Matson, new Rural Assembly director
What drew you to the Rural Assembly and rural issues?
Matson: I was raised in rural Washington State where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. We moved there when I was five years old. My dad started a nonprofit community financing organization and my mom eventually became the secretary of the elementary school. They both deeply believed that investing in community is key not only for the sake of the community but also for the betterment of ourselves as people.
My childhood was filled with volunteering, community events, and service. At five I was volunteering at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum.
That lifestyle instilled in me a deep love of rural communities and the ability to very tangibly make change and have impact every single day.
Eventually I went off to college to study journalism and after I graduated I traveled to Ireland to work on rural farms. It was there that I realized how much I loved remote places and how my own home was calling me back. I decided to move home and check off a dream I’d always had and open a bakery.
In hindsight, if you want to become a well loved member of a small town, open a bakery. It was the best re-introduction I could have had to my home and really set me up to start building adult roots and new goals in the place that had raised me. I continued volunteering, joined boards, ran for public office and started to define the work that was important to me.
In 2016 I met some women from Port Townsend who wanted to impact rural communities as much as I did on a bigger scale. We clicked. Together we founded Rethinking Rural, an organization that intended to uplift and connect rural millennials across the country to support their work and leadership. It was through that work that I first learned about and became involved with the Rural Assembly.
Rethinking Rural partnered with the Assembly on a number of events and projects including the Rural Women’s Summit in Greenville, South Carolina in 2019. I always looked up to the organization as a model for the work I wanted to do. In 2020, I had to set aside much of my work with Rethinking Rural due to the pandemic but it led me to a truly wonderful role, Executive Director of the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco. I served in that role until coming to Rural Assembly as director.
What will you be doing as Director of Rural Assembly?
I am honored and excited to fill some big shoes left by longtime Director Whitney Kimball-Coe. When I first met Whitney, I was a bit star struck, she was able to lead and communicate and excite people in a way that really spoke to me and my rural roots.
I’m excited to continue that legacy and to build a Rural Assembly that meets the time and place we are currently in. Rural needs compassionate, thoughtful, empowered leaders more than ever to push back against harmful narratives and stand up for what rural places actually need and want.
I am very excited to travel the country and meet more rural people and connect over our shared joys and struggles. I want to put my skills and passion to work but that all starts with listening and learning. I’m not completely sure what the path ahead has in store but I’m sure it will keep me busy!
What are you doing these days that brings you joy?
I have two kids, 7 and 2, and while it is a daily rollercoaster ride, they bring incredible joy. Getting to raise them in the same place I grew up (and also across the river from where my husband grew up) is an incredible gift. We can often be found enjoying the abundance of our area, clamming, fishing, running on the beach or “helping” (i.e. eating) Papa smoke salmon.
I also inherited a love of gardening from my mom who grew a massive amount of flowers and produce on our one acre growing up. I haven’t reached her level yet but I grow a range of produce and a lot of flowers. My daughter hopes we have enough to have a small roadside stand this summer… she gets her entrepreneurial bent from me. Right now I have three flats of sweet peas on my kitchen table begging to be planted outside.
I’m also a huge classic movie buff. Anything pre 1975, I’m your girl. I initially thought I wanted to be a cinematographer but thankfully had enough self-awareness at 18 to realize that that would likely mean living in a big city so I chose to study journalism and photojournalism instead. However, while I was at the University of Oregon, they started a cinema studies program and I was able to join and graduate with a second degree in cinema studies in the first graduating class from that program.
What’s one of your favorite places to be?
My husband’s family owns a float house, the Duck Shack, among the islands in the Columbia River. It has been in the family for 100 years. It’s only accessible by boat, no electricity, no plumbing, and it is the absolute perfect place to escape. My husband and I don’t get out there as much as we would like, but we’ve spent some of our most cherished moments together sitting on the deck and watching the ducks and otters swim by. Our kids are finally getting old enough to take out there and I look forward to spending hot summer days at the shack.
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