Matt "Shep" Shepard — Alberta, Canada
Built in the
mountains.
Tested in the wild.
Ultrarunner. Keynote Speaker. Community Builder.
Lessons earned the hard way, and passed on.
Who Is Shep
I don't talk about
the mountain.
I live on it.
I'm Matt Shepard. Most people call me Shep. I'm an ultrarunner and keynote speaker based in Alberta, Canada, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies.
I started out as a U.S. Army combat medic with the Oregon Army National Guard. Following the end of my term of service, I moved back to Sitka, Alaska to study at the University of Alaska Southeast while volunteering as a structural firefighter and EMT-II. From there, northern Alberta called, and I spent years in oilfield health and safety, earning a Certificate in Health and Safety from the University of New Brunswick and eventually developing my own consulting business before exiting it all and betting everything on myself.
High-consequence environments, real terrain, real stakes. That background is woven into everything I do now, on the start line and on the stage.
Today I run elite ultramarathons across North America. I build community in the places I call home and help leaders and teams push past their limits through The Mountain Method keynote.
The mountain teaches the lesson. I just show up and take notes.
Ultrarunner. Combat Medic. Keynote Speaker.
Based in the Canadian Rockies, Alberta.
By the numbers
The record speaks
for itself.
The long game
This didn't happen
overnight.
Every chapter of this story is a tool I carry. The medic training. The years on the fire floor in Alaska. The oilfield winters. The races I finished and the ones I didn't. All of it is in the room when I step onto a stage or onto a start line.
Army Medic, Firefighter & EMT-II
Combat medical training with the Oregon Army National Guard, then structural firefighting and emergency medical work in Sitka while attending the University of Alaska Southeast. Coastal Alaska is a special kind of place to learn what you're capable of. The calls are real, the resources are limited, and the margin for error is thin.
Oilfield Health & Safety
Years of health and safety work in Alberta's oil patch: remote sites, high-stakes environments, people making hard calls under pressure. A Certificate in Health and Safety from UNB only gets you so far. To be a successful consultant, you ned the kind of professional credibility that's measured in decisions, not degrees.
Field Operations, Sinister Sports
As Manager of Field Operations with Sinister Sports, I was the person who made sure thousands of athletes had an extraordinary experience across some of the most demanding terrain in Canada. The Death Race in Grande Cache. The Sinister 7 through Crowsnest Pass. The Divide 200 which passes through the Castle and along the easter slopes of the Flathead range. If something needed to happen on course, I was the one making it happen. Chainsaw in hand when needed, all of my gear on my back, and no cell service most of the time.
Elite Ultrarunner
Nobody starts at the top. I put in thousands of training miles before I ever toed a start line worth talking about. 100-milers in the Rockies. Six-day timed events in Phoenix. Backyard Ultras in Tennessee. Each one built on the last. In 2025 that work took me to two international 200-mile races on opposite sides of the world: the Wildhorse 200 in Wales and Ultra Mons 200 in Nova Trento, Brazil. Two continents, one year, and a lot of miles of perspective in between. The DNFs are in here too. They matter just as much as the finishes.
Selected results
The race record.
Not every race goes to plan. These are the performances that shaped where I am today: the wins, the records, and the ones that taught me the most by not going my way.
Keynote Speaker
The Mountain
Method.
The most valuable tools weigh nothing. You can't buy mental toughness at a gear shop. You earn it on ridgelines, in storm windows, in the kilometres between feeling strong and wanting to stop.
The Mountain Method takes those lessons, earned across thousands of kilometres of trail and a career built in high-consequence environments, and turns them into practical tools your team can actually use.
20 to 60 minutes. Story-driven. No buzzwords. Delivered with the same energy I bring to every start line at 4 a.m.
Community first.
Always has been.
MileADs Media Solutions
I built MileADs because I saw a gap: local businesses in our region had almost no access to affordable, highway-visible advertising. The kind of signage that actually gets seen. MileADs is my company, and I'm proud of what it does for the community. We give local businesses a real presence on the highway, without the corporate price tag.
It grew from the same instinct that led my business partner Adrian and I to buy the Klondike Gateway mobile home community. We saw a place that could be better for the people living there, so we made it better. Safe housing, a clean neighborhood, and now highway-visible advertising for the businesses around it. Community improvement doesn't have to be complicated.
Work with Shep
Gear testing and long-term feedback, social and video content partnerships, event presence and athlete representation. If you build something for people who go hard in wild places, reach out directly.
I keep these conversations personal. No management layer, no form to fill out.
"Real lessons from real mountains.
Everything else is just elevation."
— Matt "Shep" Shepard · goshep.run