Garret Matteotti

Age: 36

Job title: Director of Business Development, Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association.

Why he’s a 2019 Top 40 Under 40: He helps attract billions worth of investment into Alberta’s Industrial Heartland.

Garret Matteotti believes in having a positive impact on Alberta’s communities by contributing to the growth and diversity of the province’s economy.

Working for the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association over the past seven years, he’s engaged with companies looking to make major industrial investments into the Edmonton area.

While he emphasizes his work is only part of a larger effort, it has contributed to the securing of about $8.5 billion in capital investment. That includes Inter Pipeline’s Heartland Petrochemical Complex and Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corporation, a joint venture between Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Company and Alberta’s Pembina Pipeline Corporation. “We played a pretty major role… when the Kuwaitis first came to Alberta, (we made) sure they were comfortable and kind of introduced them to a variety of different players,” Matteotti says.

Matteotti says that during construction, these facilities will have over 2,000 workers on site and that long-term operations will provide approximately 300 “very high-paying, very stable, long-term jobs.”

When he’s not working to bolster the local economy, Matteotti volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and the Edmonton Food Bank. A former competitive basketball player, he also passed on his skills as a coach at J. Percy Page High School from 2007 to 2011.

“Growing up I had a lot of people that volunteered to coach me, something I truly benefited from, and it gave me the opportunity to give back,” Matteotti says.