For US National WWI Museum and Memorial CEO Matthew Naylor MAICD, being involved in the social fabric of the town he calls home is a key part of life as a successful expat.
Coming to the US in 2002, Matthew Naylor has been president and CEO of the US National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, since 2013. His considerable experience in the not-for-profit, purpose-first sector, includes 22 years as a CEO, and he has served on boards in both Australia and the US.
What was life in Australia like?
I grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Clayton and Endeavour Hills. Dad was a “Ten Pound Pom” and my parents both worked at Monash University. We lived in a working class neighbourhood and I benefited from their work ethic.
In 1975, we went back to the UK to visit. My grandfather had died a few months earlier. My aunt had burned his communist flag, because she didn’t think we’d want to see it. He was a really strong Labour council guy. An ethos of service is part of our family history.
I went to Caulfield Grammar — I’m not sure how Mum and Dad could afford it — and in Year 11, I came to San Diego as an exchange student. It expanded my horizons, showed me you can live in other places and love them.
I worked in a leadership role with [religious organisation] the Community of Christ. I was trusted by other leaders to effectively be the conductor of a big orchestra — overseeing finance, aged services, camping grounds, volunteer leadership throughout the organisation, and the creation and consolidation of a new charity. Independently, I served on the board of Camp Quality and was chair for a period.
How did the move to the US come about?
We were open to some other challenges. A friend was on the board of Outreach International, a humanitarian organisation, and they were looking for a new leader. It was a very good fit. I was in that role for 10 years, helping to create formal legal entities in lots of countries, minimising risk for the parent organisation.
I chose to move into the arts and cultural sector. As VP of external affairs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, I soon realised I do better in the number-one role than the number-two role. It’s not an ego thing, it’s just where my skills are.
The National WWI Museum and Memorial is designated by US Congress, but doesn’t receive federal funding. We’re not an American-centric museum, we collect encyclopaedically from the belligerents, telling a global story. We do commemorative activities and have extensive public programming, curriculum materials and online resources.
We serve a civic role in the region of being the front porch of Kansas City and do large-scale activities. On 4 July, we put on a concert and 91,000 people showed up. I spoke to the crowd about the core values of American democracy and there was a big fireworks show.
How is the US climate of uncertainty impacting the museum and board?
We’re thinking deeply about this, being careful and trying not be reactive. We’ve also got to do all we can to be non-partisan, for lots of reasons — fundraising, our relationship with our constituents, and with our many stakeholders.
Our curriculum materials are used by schools all over the country, so we need to be seen as a trusted, non-partisan source. We need to be aware of the environment and prepared in the event that we find ourselves under a different sort of microscope. Because we don’t receive federal funding, we have a bit more latitude than other institutions — but there are a lot of risk-mitigation conversations happening now that we mightn’t have had in earlier days.
I can’t assume there is a shared view around the boardroom about the current administration. So I, and we collectively, seek to make room for a diversity of points of view around the table. We’re very polarised in the US at present, but our board has a shared commitment to keeping that view away from the table. Who you have as board members really matters, in that respect. We want opinionated people, but you have to manage that so it doesn’t become divisive.
What are you proudest of from your time in the US?
We made a paradigm shift at the museum, which may sound nuanced, but was actually substantial. When I came here, the work was about making WWI relevant to current and future generations. That was part of our mission statement and I knew a lot of board members were invested in that. I chose not to expend political capital on wordsmithing that. Instead, I said we needed to develop, in parallel, a purpose statement.
Our purpose statement is: “America’s leading institution dedicated to interpreting, remembering and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact”. We presented this and it was worked through committees. The board members carried the water on this. It is also about good governance — you choose what staff bring and what the board members bring. For a matter like this, a board member brings it. And other members say, “That’s our mission, that’s what we ought to be about.”
The paradigm shift isn’t arguing about relevance. It’s about assuming relevance and talking about enduring impact. Consequently, it opened up this huge canvas for us to explore not only what happened during those years, but the ongoing impact of the war throughout the past 100 years. That paradigm shift is nuanced, but it has absolutely transformed the institution in so many ways.
If you ask what I’m proudest of, it’s the ability to navigate that and to then have such a large canvas that is not mission drift, but rather really laser-focused on the mission. It makes the organisation so much more porous, allowing the community to find their way in. It’s really been a powerful reorienting of the organisation.
What’s life like in Kansas City?
My wife, Tere, and I raised three children here — our oldest was 12 when we moved. We lost a daughter nine years ago. She had a baby, Liam, so we took him in. He’s our fourth child — we’ve adopted him.
We were in the suburbs and moved into a house in the inner city when we became empty nesters, which ended up being a small window. We’re involved in school activities and school life, so we do a lot of hosting activities. It might be the grade six parents’ party at our place, with 40 to 50 adults over for a casual get-together around the barbie. That’s really friendship-building.
I’m involved in two other organisations as a board chair and we frequently host cultivation-related activities on weekends. They might be catered and we’ll have entertainment, perhaps someone playing our piano. People come because they want to support the cause, and want to be in fellowship with other people. In the US, people coalesce around missions that matter. It’s very community-driven support of causes and this sort of relationship-building is important for that.
This part of the country is very hot in the summer, in the high 30s with high humidity. Then in winter, it’s very cold. We sometimes have a longer winter than I would like, but you learn to layer up. We like to be involved in cultural activities around Kansas City — and sporting activities. It’s soccer. It’s basketball. It’s field hockey. In the US, field hockey is considered a girls’ sport and they’re trying to get boys engaged. Liam likes to do that.
We have a good network of friends. People in the Midwest are very hospitable. One of the things I’ve learned is that you don’t confuse friendship with hospitality. They’re not the same. People don’t drop in like they do in Australia, they are a bit more formal. That’s also true of kids playing togetherr. They don’t tend to just drop around to a mate’s place, you’ve got to organise it.
Not everybody is successful at being an expat. There are some very practical things we do — we don’t talk about Australia as home, even though, in my heart, it is. We call home wherever we’re living. And we refer to our birthplace by its name. That’s an intentional practice on our part to help us to be rooted where we are.
Governance in the US
Australian directors stepping into US boardrooms will see core things that are the same — like the fiduciary responsibility ensuring public trust is maintained by compliance, and through ensuring we’re using the dollars as we ought to be. The organisation must be appropriately aligned with mission and strategy. There’s also another responsibility with a lot of similarity — the hiring and firing of the CEO.
The most significant difference is ensuring there are appropriate resources for the organisation, which means board members are involved in fundraising.
Board members are also used differently around strategic issues. As an example, one of our board members is also chief counsel for Garmin. We needed to address privacy and compliance issues around emails. Because we operate here and internationally, whose standard should we hold ourselves to?
This is a legal question, but it’s also a behavioural and ethical one, and a management issue. So we’ve got this balance between management and governance that all boards deal with. I asked that board member if he could bring a couple of their experts in for a conversation with our key leaders on the behaviour around this issue.
That caused us to reflect on our behaviour — the legal complexities, ethical and customer-oriented behaviours. That board member isn’t doing management for us, but he is helping us develop policy.
In my boardroom, we lean into the expertise of the board members to supplement and resource us, in ways I haven’t experienced in other places. We do that on a regular basis, for example, looking to board members to help us connect with people around philanthropy.
What’s next on your radar?
It’s part of my DNA to be involved in organising things, providing oversight or governance, supporting others, enabling mission. My board experience is deep. I’ve been doing it from both sides — as a practitioner of governance and as a board chair, for many years. Also working as a CEO and navigating boards.
Every year, at the American Alliance of Museums annual conference, I teach other museum directors how to work successfully with boards. I’ve got a real passion for governance. I’d be interested in exploring that in the Australian context. It seems to me there’s going to be a fundamental shift in funding of the for-purpose sector in Australia. Therefore, the work of boards will need to expand.
I’d be interested in participating in that conversation and finding out how the experience in a US context can be appropriately translated to enrich the Australian governance responsibility — in order to secure the funding and collaborative activities that will be required in the for-purpose sector in the future. That’s of real interest to me.
I really like what I do here, we have a great team and it’s an important mission. I’m interested in contributing to the for-purpose sector in other places as well, especially in Australia. I want to better understand the current context in Australia and to offer my skills and experience to support good governance there. I became a member of the AICD as part of my intention of being able to contribute to the discussion.
This article first appeared as 'A mission that matters' in the December 2025/January 2026 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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