COVER STORY
Photo by Dave White
Truth Happens. Szulik’s three-minute video, “Truth Happens,” portrays the Top: Szulik with his father, Ray. Bottom: with Fr. Jonathan DeFelice, O.S.B., wife Kyle, and daughter, Kaitlin.
skeptical early days of some crazy notions like the television, telephone and computer—leaving viewers to anticipate that opensource software will follow a similar trajectory, becoming an everyday commodity. The global entrepreneur chairs the world’s leading provider of open-source
Photo by Gil Talbot
and his family’s circumstances was too much. “Kyle, it’s time for me to go,” he told his wife. In that instant he decided to step down as CEO of Red Hat, Inc. When he arrived home, she was waiting at the door to ask him if he had come to his senses. He had, but if she meant by that, had he changed his mind, the answer was no. His decision to resign was firm. “I just didn’t like who I was becoming. All of the things that came with it were getting in the way of the person I was when I took the job.” Resigning at the peak of his profession having built a red-hot company was met with extreme criticism and ridicule from Wall Street types. He would be accused of fraud, impropriety and being foolish. “Who walks away when the business is doing so well?” But for Matthew it was simply a matter of staying true to his original and most cherished enterprise: the Szulik family. That troubled voice he heard on the phone in Japan, after all, belonged to the person he credits with transforming his life. “Kyle turned my life from monochrome to technicolor.” She was a receptionist newly graduated from the University of North Carolina when he first noticed her at the Boston Exxon office where he worked in 1980. It was, he insists, love at first sight. Sitting at the family’s kitchen table, Kyle laughs about the tall, young salesman who took her on several dates in a used Dodge Dart that had no heat and didn’t work in reverse. “He kept telling me I was ‘a hot ticket.’ That must have been a New England thing because I didn’t know what it meant or whether it was a good or bad thing. I finally had to ask him.” The Szuliks, now married for 29 years, have traversed many adventurous miles together since those days, and in retrospect that old Dodge Dart is an apt symbol for a young man who would move relentlessly forward. Kyle has never regretted coming along for the ride. Both she and their daughter have faced prolonged, life threatening illnesses. Her own father’s premature death has been very difficult, and presently Matthew’s lively 96 year-old father, Ray lives with the family. “It’s all been an adventure I could never have imagined,” she says. His far-flung enterprises in the heady world of venture capital and technology notwithstanding, it is clear that Matthew Szulik is most at home at home. He likens the Szulik household, replete with two raucous border collies and a one-eyed cat he named Winky, to the family in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. “Everything but the gold bar,” he says, but enough M&M’s to foster his secret addiction, a shared family allegiance to the Boston Red Sox and Notre Dame football, and an affectionate tolerance for Dad’s quirks, spontaneous hugs, and
predictable unpredictability. They are used to Matthew’s enthusiasm for life. “You need to read this!” “Check this out!” “We have to start planning this!” When he retired from Red Hat, the CEO wrote to his employees: “For many years, my face has been pressed up against the windshield trying to look into the future.” Today, Szulik reclines from the windshield comfortable in the present. He continues to serve as chair of Red Hat, while letting a new CEO manage the day-to-day. His life is hardly free from commitments, and one suspects that a new venture will again capture his imagination, but it is just as clear that he regards his primary role today as being a shareholder in the Szulik household. Bringing affordable technology to the whole world remains Matthew Szulik’s dream, but today – somewhere between yesterday’s baseball tournament, a laugh with his mischievous father, a warm hug from his daughter, a conversation about his son’s recent service trip to Cairo, and a recollection with Kyle about a Dodge Dart that couldn’t go backwards – today in these moments, truth happens.
software technology solutions. It’s an idea that he hopes will change the world by making technology affordable for everyone. He brought his company’s video—and tales of his unlikely journey—to Saint Anselm College recently.
View the “Truth Happens” video at
www.anselm.edu/truthhappens
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