Speaker Profile

Matt Thomas, aka @movingwithmat, is USA’s first Chessboxing World Champion, a combat sports commentator, and a content creator focussed on chessboxing, holistic wellness, and peak human performance.

Matt’s career started in technology as the 22nd employee at SalesLoft ($2.3B exit), and 7th employee at Roadie ($580M exit). Meanwhile, Thomas founded a 501(c)3, Brawl for a Cause, that has trained, equipped, and inspired over 300 first-time-fighters to fundraise 7-figures for over 150 non-profits.

Next, he spent 4 years traveling to over 40 countries while becoming a certified yoga instructor, studying various martial arts, and building a fitness concept called Fight and Flow, which combines basic bodyweight calisthenics with yoga for a full body workout that can be done anywhere, without equipment.

In 2018, Matt “The Matador” Thomas became the first American to compete in the Chessboxing World Championship in Kolkata, India. As captain of Team USA, he won the 90kg division and began growing the sport in North America .The founder of Chessboxing, Iepe Rubingh, called Matt the “voice of chessboxing” before his passing in 2020. In 2022, he partnered with Chess.com and Ludwig Ahgren to host the biggest chessboxing event in history, propelling the sport to the next level.

Matt’s life mission is three-fold: 1) Generate over $1B of philanthropy for causes worth fighting for, 2) Fuse ancient eastern wisdom with modern western science to unlock peak human performance, and 3) Grow the sport of Chessboxing into an Olympic-caliber, main-stream sport.