TELL US MORE MATTHEW STITT ’09
After nearly five years as the chief financial
officer to Philadelphia’s City Council, for which he helped analyze and plan multibillion-dollar budgets, Matthew Stitt was not finished with his hometown. Still, driven to use his municipal finance and equity expertise to help other cities, he switched to the private sector and joined public finance firm PFM in October 2020. As a PFM director and its first national lead for equitable recovery and strategic financial initiatives, the Northwest Philadelphia native counsels public sector clients on how to change budgets and institutions in equal service of all residents. His work especially seeks to confront the economic and social justice issues that the COVID-19 pandemic both laid
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Haverford Magazine
bare and worsened in cities throughout the country. For Stitt—a Haverford anthropology major and basketball player who wrote his thesis on the use of “stop-and-frisk” by police—these processes require municipal leaders to swap reductive, all-or-nothing mindsets for more inclusive ones. “Budgeting for equity is not anti-growth, it is not a zerosum game,” he says about the framework, which has already informed Bloomberg Philanthropies-supported initiatives in New Orleans and Tampa. He also cofounded a center focusing on these strategies last year. “But certain foundational systems need to be reset if governments want a better chance at improving upon the outcome.” Stitt, who holds executive MPA and MBA degrees from the
PHOTO: HOLDEN BLANCO ’17
Building Equity Into City Budgets
