Matt Lee is tough to summarize. He obtained his stockbroker’s license at 19, worked in financial advising, banking and mortgage lending—he even bought and sold gold for a time. Naturally, that turned into traveling the Southwest buying and selling diamonds.
Perhaps all that career diversity led to a perfect role for someone so gregarious and hungry for connection. Now senior director of security and compliance at Pax8, Lee averages over 100 flights a year living a life of industry events and IT service provider (ITSP) engagement.
When Lee secured a lucrative exit from a previous company, he was free to find a good-fit opportunity. Pax8, he says, “gives me the rope to do what I want to—to improve the world. I was looking for a way to do that.”
With the latitude to explore initiatives that may not at a glance seem to tie to a bottom line, Lee has leaned into wide-ranging volunteer work with GTIA. Presently he is a member of the GTIA Cybersecurity Trustmark working group, where he has been instrumental in developing educational resources to help members improve their security positioning. Lee also participates in the SME advisory group where he shares his expertise to help shape GTIA educational content, resources and initiatives.
But Lee is perhaps most well-known for his role as a highly-sought-after speaker and educator, commanding the stage at industry events.
All this has led to Lee being named the 2024-25 GTIA Member of the Year. The award recognizes a single GTIA member who has demonstrated outstanding service and impact through their commitment, passion, professionalism and leadership.
Lee says on his list of organizations that have a shot at improving the world and the channel, GTIA was an easy choice. Now, he refers to the GTIA community as “a common brethren.”
That Lee sees the GTIA membership as family resonates strongly with GTIA chief community officer MJ Shoer, who says that "Matt embodies the spirit of genuine human connection.”
“He has an extraordinary gift for meeting people where they are and instantly making them feel seen and valued. On a personal note, I couldn’t be prouder to see someone like Matt represent GTIA,” Shoer said.
Longtime friend and president of IT consultancy CNWR Jason Slagle agrees.
“Matt Lee is one of the most giving humans I've ever met in my life,” he says. “If you ask him to do something without hesitation, he will say ‘yes.’”
“He carries an optimism with him that I have not seen in very many people ... especially (in the) cybersecurity community. We ... see a lot of bad things, and Matt (is) a ray of sunshine that the industry badly needs,” Slagle said.
It's About Finding the Right Path Forward
The path to success is rarely straight. Early in his journey, Lee said he got kicked out of business school, something that might have stalled some, but not him.
“I wrote a thesis basically proving my professor was wrong about a macroeconomics point she made in class,” Lee says. “I learned in that moment you can be right and wrong at the same time.”
And, that lesson seems to have stuck with Lee. Over his career, being right or wrong has been less important than understanding both sides and learning to collaborate and compromise to find success and help the world become a little more secure and connected.
In IT, and specifically cybersecurity, Lee says, the right path forward for individual companies and the industry requires “a common body of knowledge that is widely accepted and widely adopted.”
Given there are few barriers preventing companies from dubbing themselves MSPs, Lee says there are MSPs out there that aren’t focused on elevating clients and instead put their goals ahead of client needs. Thus, Lee is concerned about SMBs as many “are below the cybersecurity poverty line. They are the recipients of harm from bad companies and bad leadership.”
Lee’s success in the channel has come from a preternatural ability to lean into his clients’ day-to-day—their industry realities, their specific pain points and value propositions. And this must-do is hand-in-glove for Lee.
“When I started with an MSP, I realized that I could learn about every kind of company—how they make money, how they operate. It comes from curiosity and lots of questions,” he says.
Being All the Way In
Lee is clear about the fact that he brings all of himself with him everywhere he goes. A self-described hacker, a perennial student and teacher, a prolific speaker and author and, not last or least, a father and husband, Lee is also clear about who it is who makes it all possible—his wife Kat.
To fly so much and be as out in the world as often as he must be, Lee has to have a locked-down routine, “and Kat is 90% of that,” he says. So, what’s the secret to their 23-year partnership?
“I’m crazy; she’s not,” Lee says with a chuckle. “Kat is super stable—she doesn’t miss deadlines.
“Kat does a really good job of being the human that would interfere when I had to get something done—people want to talk to her. She pushes me in the ribs,” Lee says, noting that Kat often reminds him to lift his gaze from a task to talk to the people who are hoping for some of his attention.
“I actually say I'm a ‘Matt Wrangler’. That's what I like my job title to really be,” Kat says, adding with a laugh that “I have kept him from walking into walls and people a lot. And I always make sure he's where he needs to be when we're at conferences.”
It also comes down to regimentation. Lee says he hasn’t packed a bag in 22 years and says his suitcase is really a go-bag, one that he never truly empties. Though, Kat clarifies that packing is her domain: "He's not allowed to touch that.”
Kat is also his gear guru and de facto chief of staff, helping him set up at events because he’s always being pulled in so many directions, ensuring he’s always in the right place at the right time and more.
“I like to say I'm in the industry by proxy, and I love meeting the people and just helping to move the needle in any way I can as well,” Kat says.
As for how Matt himself manages his busy schedule, he's learned to give himself some grace. One pitfall of being a public persona who cares deeply about what audiences take away from an engagement is the feeling that every talk or presentation requires a reinvention of the wheel.
Lee has learned that repeating yourself is okay and that what matters is knowing as much about the audience ahead of time as possible. This has translated into connecting with audiences who consistently provide glowing reviews.
Getting Knocked Down and Getting Back Up
On the professional side, Lee has climbed in part because he has taken his knocks and learned from them. In the not-too-distant past, Matt took on the challenge of helping an acquired company correct course after it had been compromised not once but twice, and they did not do the work they should have before he came on board, leading to a third incident.
“I’ve dealt with companies firing us, threatening to sue, getting compromised once under my charge,” he says, pausing and getting quiet. It’s clear that past challenges still resonate with him emotionally.
“My single greatest fear is that we’re the next service provider that’s dealing with being comprised,” he shares. “And that’s happened. One thousand two hundred end points detonated with ransomware. Every company fired us; every employee hated us. When you lose a few million bucks, you get serious.”
That was a big why for him. And where many others may just move on and try to sweep the details under the rug, Lee has leaned in, deciding that security needs to be baked in, in the DNA, part of the code, for any business.
“You have to provide guidelines that are going to hurt some feelings—things that will make you the bad guy,” he reflects.
He’s been on many companies’ advisory boards and has seen time and again how inadequate security policies are. Sometimes, it even seems willful.
“Not only are they uneducated—the tools they use and the companies they use suck. That turned into: ‘What if I can be part of something that’s different?’”
GTIA Members: Doing Business Together
GTIA prides itself on leading with community—doing business together rather than each member alone on an island. It’s better for the individual, it’s better for the organization and it’s better for the industry. This caught Lee’s attention and has kept him engaged, and he’s proud to say there are a lot of people he trusts in the GTIA community.
But there’s ground yet to be covered.
For the industry to really thrive, he says, security standardization must be the goal. Lee feels the industry has gotten through the stages of denial and senses that many leaders and organizations are now very serious about implementing robust and proactive security toolkits.
“There are three buckets: What you know, what you don’t know and what you don’t know you don’t know,” he says, and even though MSPs have come a long way, he insists the next hurdle is to look inward.
“We haven’t crossed the border of doing it for ourselves—many MSPs haven’t looked at their own houses. They’re doing it for their customers. The general state of the MSP is that they’re aware,” but everyone needs to be walking the walk.
Still, Lee does believe MSPs are the answer, and automation is the key.
He even believes that, when partnering with MSPs, “SMBs will surpass the capability, from a security perspective, of enterprise in the next five years. There is a correlation of forces coming together.
“Everything the MSPs and SMBs do will be in Azure active directory using SaaS applications over some kind of SSO methodology.
"Enterprise can’t take advantage of (this new landscape) because they have legacy brownfield. They have too many old things they have to keep working and can’t move to the new modalities.
“Things are going to be turned on their head a little bit. There are companies out there doing things that are taking that concept of scale and doing it well.
“It’s value being brought to the MSP, to the SMB and then to the end user. The idea is reduction of harm. MSPs are in a great place right now, but their homes aren’t.”
He refers here again to the cybersecurity poverty line: “2025 is the year of haves and have nots—those who are embracing, looking at their own homes, are going to be fine. Those who don’t adapt, aren’t going to exist.”
GTIA and Strengthening MSP Cybersecurity Posture
Lee sees great promise in GTIA's cybersecurity programs but feels that, at some point, they must become broadly accepted and depended upon across the industry as a way for organizations to demonstrate an even higher level of credibility.
“GTIA will reinvent itself through this call to action. It would broaden our impact,” he says, adding that “the GTIA Information and Sharing Analysis Organization (ISAO) is getting more tactical, getting more valuable, getting more directly tied into systems and becoming more functional across the MDR.”
Lee sees the GTIA ISAO as being the body that can enhance ITSPs’ tactical capabilities there, whereas the GTIA Cybersecurity Trustmark then sets standards for ITSPs and other companies.
“At some point,” he says, “there are things I accept when I leave my house—I lock the front doors, I set the alarm, those type of things.”
The Commodification of Knowledge
This year’s ChannelCon theme is “The Future is Human,” and Lee wishes to add to that his belief that “there will be a delineation in what is knowledge and knowledge will become a commodity.”
He insists that the human element is and will remain a premium.
“There’s a today and tomorrow,” he says, reassuringly. “My belief is that when we, as a human species, take on a new technology, we let it go as it goes. And years later, our kids or grandkids deal with the impact of that and change it. There’s this cycle we go through.”
Kat agrees but notes Matt’s focus is on empowerment, betterment.
“He sticks to his guns; he's passionate," she says. “He wants to move the needle, but he wants to make this world better for our kids or grandkids, everyone's kids and grandkids. He's willing to do whatever it takes to get that needle moved.”
Lee believes we're at a critical inflection point. He does believe the industry will overcome its current technical gaps—especially through this new AI era—and arrive at a place where security can be built-in and humans won’t have to implement (or fail to).
“You don’t argue with your car when the seatbelt dinging happens,” he says. “You just buckle your seatbelt. We will protect humans from their own problems—we just haven’t done it yet.”
To that end, and as it states in Lee’s nomination form, what makes him exceptional is his understanding that advancing the technology industry isn't just about technology; it's about people.
When asked to elaborate, Lee says the secret isn’t really one: “People want to be heard. If I can do one thing to make someone feel seen, I’ll do it.
“When you speak, connecting with people in the audience makes you feel less stupid. It’s all about understanding where others are coming from and meeting them there.
“If you just scare people all the time, it can create short-term action or it can create stress that creates inaction. It’s better to lead with laughs.”
As for being named GTIA Member of the Year, Lee is characteristically humble.
“Yes, it’s an achievement,” he says, a little quietly, adding that “the challenge is that I wouldn’t have submitted myself for it and I hate taking it from someone else.”
That said, Lee plans to use the influence to drive the things he wants to get done inside GTIA.
