About the Author

Matthew Shoemaker grew up in the telecom industry. His father worked his way from CATV field technician to managing ISP field operations, while his mother served as Director of Customer Service for a Tier 1 internet service provider. When Matthew was 10, his parents started their own telecom construction business, where he began learning the industry from the ground up.

Throughout high school, Matthew conditioned for football by pulling a lasher and working as a ground hand on aerial line crews. After college, he returned to the family business and worked his way from field construction technician and fiber splicer to Director of Technical Operations. Alongside his brothers, Matthew helped the family significantly grow the business, expanding into several satellite locations throughout the Midwest before the company was eventually sold.

The company provided aerial and underground telecom construction, FTTX and FTTH deployment, long-haul and middle-mile construction, business-as-usual construction and maintenance, telecom engineering, and related infrastructure services for major ISPs and network operators.

Matthew later moved his family to Data Center Alley, where he raised five children and built a life in communities experiencing record levels of data center growth unlike almost anywhere else in the world. His experience includes directly managing and estimating large data center campus telecom buildouts, helping develop and manage network infrastructure for the world’s largest cloud provider, and working with communities affected by telecom construction and development surrounding major data center campuses.

This perspective was not only professional. It was personal. His family added children and pets while living in these rapidly growing regions, navigating the same neighborhoods, schools, roads, construction activity, utility disruptions, and community changes that local residents experienced every day.

Matthew has seen the benefits firsthand—STEM-focused education, demand for skilled trades, new business opportunities, infrastructure investment, and long-term economic growth—as well as the real disruptions that can accompany rapid development, including constant construction noise, utility impacts, road closures, traffic issues, and neighborhood strain. From major water disruptions caused by utility strikes to local roads being blocked by semitrucks that took the wrong turn, he has experienced the tension between critical infrastructure progress and everyday community impact from both sides: as an industry professional and as a neighbor.

His move to Louisiana placed him directly adjacent to the Richland Parish data center development and ongoing BEAD fiber-to-the-home deployments. That transition brought him back to his core passion: connectivity that creates value for all stakeholders.

Through The Shoe Fits Strategic Advisors and Investments LLC, Matthew helps communities, businesses, developers, contractors, broadband providers, and infrastructure stakeholders better understand the network, construction, and connectivity questions shaping modern development. His perspective is rooted in the field, the boardroom, and the neighborhood—as an industry professional, small construction firm advocate, FTTH and broadband enthusiast, informed community member, husband, father of five, and neighbor.

Outside of work, Matthew enjoys spending time with his family, boating, grilling, cooking, discovering great craft beer, and continuing to learn about connectivity in nearly every form.