Matthew Bentley, M.A., Ph.D., Class of 2004

I grew up in a middle-class suburban home in the northern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. With dozens of interests but no specific career goal at the time I enrolled to study economics and finance at Western Sydney University, earning my Bachelor degree in 1996. The degree included a one-year exchange program at the State University of New York. I returned a year later on a Mountbatten Internship program, which included sponsorship by global financial services firm American Express (Amex). I worked for twelve months as a Legal Compliance Officer, focusing on anti-money laundering initiatives for the bank, which I found fascinating.

I met my soon-to-be native-French wife during that year abroad and in order to facilitate a way for us to be together we hurriedly researched postgraduate study options in Europe. Ultimately the remit was pretty simple: identify a university in France that would accept a young Australian bloke with absolutely no foreign language skills. Thankfully AGS had recently kicked off operations at its rue de Lübeck premises. After some helpful telephone conversations with the former President Dr. John Lee I was enrolled in the combined MA-PhD program and was on my way to France. I was always enthralled by our world, and in particular the politics and machinations between nation-states. Thus, international relations and diplomacy was a sound choice for a postgraduate degree.

I enjoyed every waking minute of my time at AGS, the small class sizes, insightful professors and a well-rounded family environment. Joyce Lee was like our second mum and kept us all under control! My self-confidence soared in such a vibrant and supporting environment. I interned as an English teacher at a medium-sized university in Ekaterinburg, Russia at the crossroads (indeed border) between Asia and Europe. I also interned at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) thanks to a connection fostered by a fellow AGS student, Peter Wolczik who is still a close friend today! Indeed, to work at the United Nations in some capacity was a lifelong goal of mine derived at a young age!

I wrote about sustainable consumption and production for my PhD dissertation. Some key components of my research have been published and other elements have been incorporated into UN reports and other publications. I wrote about sustainable consumption for journals, magazines and book chapters. I ventured back to UNEP several years later as a Programme Officer travelling the world training government officials from developing countries about sustainable consumption policy tools.

Since completing my dissertation, I have worked in a range of high profile roles at the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and Essential Energy - a major government utility business. At AusAID, I managed the Afghanistan overseas aid program during the height of global hostilities, which was both stressful and mightily exhilarating. I also worked on the AusAID Africa aid program desk and managed corporate services functions including internal audit and corporate planning. 

Today, I work myself. I have recently launched Bentley Editing (www.bentleyediting.com). I offer high quality proofreading and editing services to governments, businesses, students and writers around the world. Writing and editing high quality material has been the cornerstone of my professional career. Hence I felt that it was merely a natural progression to bring together my experience in editing publications and a desire to help other people into a small boutique editing and proofreading business.

Life has certainly thrown our family some curve balls. What meaningful life has not. However, to be honest, my years at AGS in Paris helped cultivate a resilience and self-confidence that has helped sustain me professionally and personally over the past fifteen years.

I am still married to that young French lady from western France. We now have three brilliant boys together who all excel at something or other.

Contact: info@bentleyediting.com