The Story Behind HB3
What is HB3?
HB3 stands for “HayBarBiBo,” a tribute to the personal inspirations behind my work: my two dogs, Haylee and Barlow, and my wife. They remind me daily that loyalty, patience, and genuine support hold everything together, professionally and personally.
Who is HB3?
I'm Dr. Matt Borek, and I've spent over two decades doing the unglamorous, detail-oriented work that education reform actually requires.
I started as a music teacher, earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College with a concentration in education reform and policy, and spent years working across classrooms, universities, state agencies, and cultural institutions. That breadth wasn't accidental. Education reform has a persistent habit of failing because the people designing it don't understand the full system they're trying to change. I wanted to understand all of it.
That background has taken me into some unusual corners. I've built data systems for large-scale grant evaluations, designed teacher licensure frameworks, produced policy briefs that ended up shaping state-level decisions, and facilitated convenings with 40-plus stakeholders that actually moved the needle rather than just filling a room. I've worked at the level of the individual classroom and at the level of statewide policy, and I've learned that the distance between those two things is where most reforms go wrong.
Most recently, I served as Director of Lifelong Learning at a cultural institution / attraction in Las Vegas. I inherited a team, an unclear mandate, and a unit that hadn't yet found its footing. We tripled field trip attendance, launched new programming for older adults, transformed family programs, and built an evaluation system that let us make credible claims about impact rather than just counting heads. It remains some of the work I'm most proud of.
That experience confirmed something I'd long suspected: microschools and cultural institutions face remarkably similar challenges. Both are mission-driven and under-resourced. Both struggle to translate genuinely good work into evidence that satisfies funders, authorizers, and skeptical stakeholders. Both deserve better strategic and evaluative support than they typically have access to. And both are missing out on partnership opportunities.
HB3 exists to provide that support.
My Approach
My approach across all of my work has been consistent:
Start with the problem as the client actually experiences it, not as it looks on paper.
Build the research and evaluation infrastructure that lets organizations make honest claims about their work.
Design strategies that account for the real constraints of mission-driven organizations rather than the idealized conditions most frameworks assume. I'm more useful to clients who want rigorous thinking than to those who want validation of decisions already made.
Education
Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction (concentration in education reform and policy), Boston College
M.Ed., Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation, Boston College
B.Music, Music Performance and Music Education (dual degree), Ithaca College
A Few Things Worth Noting
I've supported over $300M in successful grant applications, co-developed international curriculum standards, contributed to landmark state-level educator evaluation and licensure reforms, and built and led two teacher fellowship programs. I mention these not to impress but to establish that the work has been real, varied, and consequential.
For a detailed overview of my background and project history, you can download my credentials one-pager here.
If that's the kind of depth your project needs, let's talk.