Everything you need, in one quiet place.
Bios, headshots, one sheets, and a direct line for editors, producers, podcasters, and event programmers on a deadline.
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High-resolution, free for editorial use. 300 DPI for print and web. Photo credit: Evie Photography.
Biographies
Three lengths. Use whichever meets your needs.
Dr. Matthew Wilburn King is a scholar, explorer, and author whose TEDx talk on reimagining capitalism has reached over 1 million views. He believes we are living through a profound mythological transition. The stories that once organized our world – limitless growth, separation from nature, and hyper-individualism – are falling apart. What comes next requires a new relationship to reality: one grounded in evolutionary truth, ecological interdependence, and scientific awe. Over the last three decades, King has traversed 45+ countries, working with governments, scientists, and communities to understand how human systems adapt or fail. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, mapping the geopolitical realities of resource conflict, and his work is driven by a single question: how can human systems evolve to ensure the survival of life on a finite planet?
Dr. Matthew Wilburn King is a scholar, explorer, and author whose TEDx talk on reimagining capitalism has reached over 1 million views. King believes we are living through a profound mythological transition. The stories that once organized our world – limitless growth, separation from nature, and hyper-individualism – are falling apart. What comes next requires a new relationship to reality: one grounded in evolutionary truth, ecological interdependence, and scientific awe.
Over the last three decades, King has traversed 45+ countries, working with governments, scientists, and communities to understand how human systems adapt or fail. King earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, mapping the geopolitical realities of resource conflict. His work is driven by a single question: How can human systems evolve to ensure the survival of life on a finite planet?
King’s path has been an intentional evolution. He began his career building institutions and advancing environmental security and governance through natural resource management. As a U.S. Presidential Management Fellow, Program Manager for NOAA Research International, and Principal Investigator for the U.S. Department of State, he led diplomatic initiatives to strengthen environmental security and governance in Latin America and the Caribbean, contributed to policy for the White House’s U.S. Ocean Action Plan, and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for creativity and innovation.
Surviving Stage IV-b cancer in 2012 forced a profound shift from head to heart. King realized that life, like democracy and capitalism, depends entirely on cooperation; it is an evolutionary advantage.
For 18 years, King served as Founder and CEO of Our COMMON Foundation, treating philanthropy as an incubator for social and environmental entrepreneurship and helping catalyze over $5.2 million for 40+ initiatives impacting more than 50,000 lives worldwide.
King has served on faculty at the University of Cambridge, George Washington University, and the University of Colorado Boulder. He has published academic work and more than 70 pieces across outlets such as BBC, Mongabay, and Earth Island Journal.
Today, he explores. His focus is on presence, creativity, and writing. As a scout, he rides ahead of the caravan amid rapid global change, explores new terrain, illuminates risks, marks routes, and delivers maps to navigate the future.
Data informs algorithms; stories shift paradigms and people.
Six conversations Matthew is currently having.
A space to be present with our ecological interdependence while acknowledging that ‘God is Energy’ – eternal and ever-transforming. This conversation explores a spiritual life grounded not in dogma, but in the physics of energy: how all matter is energy, how it moves through the cosmos, and how that same flow shapes our bodies, relationships, and ecosystems. We begin again not by dominating people and the planet, but by realizing a new myth grounded in evolutionary truth, ecological interdependence, and scientific awe – a spiritual ecology for all.
A fierce, energy-focused philosophy on living in alignment. A practical breakdown of how to seal your energy leaks and step away from the performance economy. It’s not just an idea; it includes pragmatic exercises to help you stop reacting to the world and start living from the inside out.
Why the economic system we inherited was built for a different era, and why capitalism needs to empower people again. Backed by three decades of field research, policy work, and a TEDx talk with over 1M views, this conversation explores how the system must evolve to serve people, the planet, and peace.
The old stories that once organized our world – limitless growth, hyper-individualism, and the illusion that humans are separate from nature – are falling apart. A new, 21st-century mythos grounded in evolutionary truth, ecological interdependence, and scientific awe is critical to our survival.
Vanished begins with the instantaneous disappearance of all human-made material reality. Stripped of our technology, infrastructure, and illusions of dominance, humanity is plunged into the void to answer a singular, existential question: Who are we when the scaffolding of the human-made world is gone and all that’s left is nature? A cinematically alive, spiritually awake, and emotionally devastating portrait of the human experience as the world we know disappears. Vanished reframes our global crisis not as a political debate, but as a visceral battle for survival.
Through fieldwork across 45+ countries, three decades of research on environmental security and governance, surviving Stage IV-b cancer, and an endless desire to understand our place in the natural world, this conversation explores what actually helps life persist. An inquiry into how humans have evolved to cooperate, and what that means for our shared future.
TEDx Talk on Reimagining Capitalism
Exploring how empowerment – through freedom, opportunity, and collective action – can transform capitalism from an extractive system into one that genuinely serves people, planet, and peace. King integrates personal history, ancestral resilience, and real-world examples into a roadmap for reimagining our economic future.
Read: Why the Next Stage of Capitalism is Coming (BBC Future) →
Euronews Interview
A wide-ranging international broadcast profile discussing global risk, presence, and systemic resilience amid rapid ecological change.
Read: How Brain Biases Prevent Action on Climate Change (BBC Future) →
Other Selected Lectures & Keynotes
2024
University of Tulsa
Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Capitalism
A public lecture at King’s alma mater on why capitalism must adapt to a new era of ecological limits and social upheaval. This talk examines the role of empowerment in reshaping markets, and how individuals can act as agents of systemic evolution rather than passive subjects of the status quo.
2024
CU Boulder
Reimagining Capitalism: Culture, Power, and Democracy in a Changing World
A public lecture on how culture, narrative, and power dynamics shape our economic system. King connects the dots between democracy, ecological stability, and the stories we tell about value and success to imagine a more just, life-supporting economy.
Matthew’s work has appeared in or been hosted by:
Everything you need to introduce the work.
Browse individual speaker and book assets below, or download the complete media kit in one file.
Speaker One-Sheet
Streamlined overview of his speaking themes, biography, and actionable takeaways for event organizers and podcast hosts.
179 KB
One Choice. One Act. – Sell Sheet
An overview of his upcoming non-fiction guide. A fierce, energy-focused philosophy on living in alignment.
224 KB
Press Kit – Full Bundle
A single, comprehensive download containing high-resolution headshots, all bios, the speaker one-sheet, and both book sell sheets.
37 MB
Connect: press, podcasts, and editorial.
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