Photo courtesy of Matthew Griffin.
Matthew Griffin is the new information technology director for the city of Chelsea.
Chelsea is welcoming a new member to the city staff with the arrival of information technology director Matthew Griffin.
Griffin grew up in Homewood and has worked in IT for about 10 years, including as a system administrator for the University of Alabama and teaching roles with the public libraries in Gardendale and Pelham.
For the past four years, he has worked as an IT system administrator for Pelham.
Griffin said his interest in pursuing IT as a career came from problem solving.
“With IT, it’s more logic, but it’s turned, in recent years, more into almost like a psychology where you’re a people person and you help people with the computer instead of always dealing with the computer problems,” Griffin said. “It’s a good mix of problem solving on the human side and problem solving on the computer side.”
He first developed IT experience in the medical field, as a teenager.
“When I was 13, I was helping my dad’s medical office when they first got computers, so I’ve been doing IT for a lot longer than just 10 years,” he said.
He later was in a doctoral program at the University of Alabama but decided that teaching at that level wasn’t really matching up with his interests, so he pivoted. “It was a little painful, but sometimes you have to pivot to get where you’re really needed,” he said.
When asked why he was interested in pursuing a role with Chelsea, Griffin cited the growth of the city.
“Chelsea is growing, and I am really interested in helping,” he said. “I got a servant’s heart, if you will, and saw a need, and my skills matched up with what they were asking for.”
Griffin lives in Alabaster with his wife, Krysten. The two have been married for 14 years and have an 8-year-old daughter, Abby, who is going into the third grade and two cats named Aang and Panda.
Griffin said he and his family have fun playing video games and board games, and he also enjoys woodworking as a hobby.
“I try to get into model making,” he said. “We play a DND game where I like to use miniatures to do the scenery, but painting at that detail and that scale is sometimes difficult for me, but I do try. I carve, I wood turn, and I’m pretty good at making tables. My hobby is collecting hobbies, almost.”
Griffin said one of his family’s favorite local restaurants is Salvatore’s Pizza & Pasta, which has a location in Chelsea. “We love Salvatore’s Pizza, and we do love a good home pizzeria atmosphere.”
Griffin said his family also looks forward to exploring archery in Chelsea.
“My daughter really loves archery, so we drove past and saw that the city had an archery range. So we were really fascinated to take a look at that and see what the process would be to use that and how to get better at archery.”
When asked about what he hopes to accomplish with Chelsea, Griffin said he hopes to help build out the infrastructure and help make it easier for residents and employees of the city to do their jobs.
“If they’re struggling with any tech-related thing, I’ll be able to help them solve it, and then they can continue on with more work or however they see fit.”
