Every Saint Has a Story: Matthew Zimmer G'28

Jun 30, 2026

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Matthew Zimmer G'28 was a flame-throwing lefty at Schenectady High School in the late 90s, with a fastball that flirted near triple digits. He was recruited to pitch for Siena, but he borrowed a line from Good Will Hunting and said, "I gotta go see about a girl." Zimmer turned down Siena to follow his Schenectady Blue Jays travel baseball coach to Columbia-Greene Community College. It was there, during his freshman year, that he met his future wife, then a senior at Union College, and pitched for two seasons. He would, eventually, find his way into a Siena classroom... three businesses, many inventions, and a quarter of a century later.

Zimmer walked away from baseball after community college. He had the 20/20 vision and lightning-fast reflexes to fly fighter jets, driven by what his U.S. Navy medic father called a "Maverick spirit" (which fits perfectly, since his Polish family name, Zmijewski, translates to "Viper"). But, Zimmer's wife Marina nixed the idea of joining the Navy, so he leaned into entrepreneurship and chose to continue his dad's legacy: using data and technology to heal minds and keep families safe.

Zimmer leaned into entrepreneurship and worked alongside Das Nobel '06 as the chief data officer and chief research officer of AI & Emerging Technologies at MTX Group. To understand the massive scale of his work: in January 2020, Zimmer was one of only two people deployed to the New York State Department of Health to build the state's pandemic response system in under 24 hours. That system ultimately protected over 250 million people nationwide and served as the catalyst for MTX's global expansion. He also served as the principal investigator for a team that published a first-of-its-kind research paper detailing how the pandemic accelerated the opioid crisis.

All of the work and all of the ideas have been building toward a crescendo... and he eventually made his way to Siena to pursue his life's work.

"I was under the wing of Das and he gave me some of the most brilliant tools," Zimmer said. "He really showed me the blueprint to build a successful company. He was guiding me to a CEO position, but I knew that to be a deep-tech business owner I needed an education in corporate finance. I didn't take Siena up on the offer the first time, but when I looked into its MBA program, I knew now was the time."

In his junior year at Schenectady HS, Zimmer blew out his knee. He had successful surgery and recovered physically long before he fully recovered mentally. Every time he planted his right leg during a throw, he worried he would aggravate the injury. Eventually, the fear faded, but the core issue - the universal mental roadblock to an athlete's recovery - stuck with him. He became determined to find a scientific solution to cure the mental roadblock.

In his first semester at Siena, Zimmer took an accounting course with Valencia Fontenelle-Posson '25, G'26, a standout student-athlete on the basketball team. Fontenelle-Posson has suffered several major knee injuries in her career, and they talked about the mental side of recovery. Most importantly, the two entrepreneurs discussed what they could do about it.

Zimmer founded Athenaware, that's the entity, and Athena Halo is the digital platform jointly created by Zimmer and Fontenelle-Posson. It's an app designed to counsel athletes through the mental and emotional trauma that often follows physical injury. Their invention earned first place honors at the spring Spark Tank competition, and it's being heralded for its female-first approach, with a focus on eliminating the "male default" bias in medical research to ensure women receive properly tailored recovery plans.

"The greatest decision I ever made was trading the mound for lifelong learning. I'm so happy I came to Siena. It feels like this place and the professors are an extension of my family, and I'm able to see my ideas blossom."

Through his deep-tech firm Foresiteware (currently incubated at the UAlbany Innovation Center) and his leadership at his management consulting firm MVP Collective, Zimmer is building a self-sustaining revenue engine to fund breakthrough inventions like Athena Halo (check out a demo here). In fact, he is actively applying for an NIH SBIR grant to commercialize his patent-pending AI software designed to save lives from the opioid crisis. In the meantime, he's fully immersing himself in Siena. He's the president of the Graduate Student Council, a one-year-old bridge between the graduate student community and Siena's alumni network and local businesses. The council holds several networking events each year. He also lent his time as an advisor to the FAE students from Brazil who spent time on campus in the Stack Center this summer (see Saints Go Marching, above).

Zimmer's mind doesn't stop thinking, solving, creating. He just needed the right place to bring his ideas to life.

"While my mind is always building complex systems, I take my responsibility to build a culture where my team feels secure and loves coming to work very seriously. I pursued my MBA to discover my true leadership voice, and I'm finding exactly that at Siena. I think that's the Siena guarantee."

To borrow one more line from Good Will Hunting, "How 'bout them apples."