Matthew Ries serves DC Water as Director, Strategic Leadership and Sustainability. A member of DC Water’s Strategy and Performance Management team, Dr. Ries is leading the utility’s program to advance strategic management and sustainability within DC Water’s operations. He has a broad range of responsibilities including overseeing strategic performance reporting and engagement with staff and management while advancing DC Water’s sustainability function, including ESG reporting and diverse stakeholder engagement.

Dr. Ries has more than 25 years of professional experience in environmental engineering and management and joined the authority in 2017. Previously he worked for 12 years as Chief Technical Officer at the Water Environment Federation, a global, not-for-profit technical and educational organization. His work at the Federation included outreach and knowledge transfer within the water sector on the topics of innovation, sustainability, stormwater, resilience, and nutrient management. He also worked as a consultant in the planning, design, construction, and startup of municipal and industrial water, wastewater, and stormwater facilities.

Dr. Ries recently served for five years on the Board of Directors of Alexandria Renew Enterprises, the water resource recovery utility in Alexandria, Virginia. He also served as a Director of the Alliance for Water Stewardship, a global network that promotes responsible useand as a Director at the Anacostia Watershed Society, a local non-governmental environmental organization.

Dr. Ries has a Bachelors of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Valparaiso University, a Masters of Science in Environmental Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and a PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of South Florida where he was a courtesy professor at the Patel College of Global Sustainability. His dissertation focused on the development of an urban water sustainability index and the connection between urban water utility organizational attributes and sustainability.  He is a registered Professional Engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia.