View full sizeMatt Donegan, president of the Oregon Board of Higher Education, leads the meeting in which University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere was fired in late 2011. The move was made, in part, after Lariviere strayed from the board's direction to limit his work on gaining more autonomy for the university.A larger-than-usual security crew dots the room, prepared in case the Oregon Board of Higher Education meeting to decide Lariviere's fate turns violent. A day earlier, Donegan, the board's president, had received a death threat from a Lariviere supporter.
The 40-something entrepreneur nods quietly as professors, politicians and wealthy alumni boo. Several yell "Shame on you."
Matt Donegan
Age: 45
Family: Divorced with three children under age 8
Background: Born and raised through about half his childhood in New York, then his family of five moved to Tampa, Fla.
Education: Forestry degree from the University of Florida; MBA with a concentration in forest industries management from the University of Tennessee
Employment: Sold the holdings of his timber investment management organization he co-founded, Forest Capital Partners, in July, 2012
Current boards: Serves as president of the Oregon Board of Higher Education; Oregon Education Investment Board
Past boards: Leadership roles on Gov. John Kitzhaber's economic development team; Oregon Education Investment Team; Oregon Global Warming Commission; Oregon Forest Resources Institute, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the Oregon Business Council
Hobbies: Basketball, hiking and reading. He had a goal of visiting all 50 states, but has been stuck on 48 for the past seven years. This holiday weekend he'll cross the Dakotas off his list.
A relative newcomer to Oregon with no particular educational expertise or political experience, Donegan has been tapped by two governors for high-profile appointments based on his forest management background and a knack for problem-solving. Most recently, Gov. John Kitzhaber named Donegan to his Oregon Education Investment Board, where the twoare working to overhaul the state's education system from preschool through college.
Donegan, now 45, and a partner sold their billion-dollar timber investment firm last year, allowing him to focus more exclusively on public service, a calling instilled in him as a kid sitting around his Irish Catholic family's dining room table.
His successful leadership so far, and independent wealth, have generated rumors of a bright political future, including a possible bid for governor, a move Donegan says he won't rule out.
But as his public star has risen because of his ability to get results in tough situations, Donegan's private world has descended into chaos.
Eight days after the Lariviere hearing, Donegan's wife filed for divorce. Over the past year and a half, the private man's personal life has spilled into open court as he fights for custody of his three young children.
Traditional family roots
When he was 14, Donegan dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, or maybe a lawyer or an engineer, because he was good at math. Then his father took the family of five on their first-ever vacation.
They drove north from their Tampa, Fla., home for 12 hours, climbing slowly into the misty hills of North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains. They arrived at a musty little cabin after dark and the teen drifted to sleep.
He awoke to a new world.
"I remember the fireflies, the rivers and lakes. There was a deep connection I can't quite put my finger on," he said. "We came home from that vacation and it really put me on a new path."
Donegan's father, a first-generation American born to Irish immigrants, was an insurance claims adjuster in Manhattan, not far from the Bronx neighborhood where Donegan spent his early years. It was a solid job, but one that didn't provide for many extravagances. Strict Catholics, Donegan's parents preached patriotism, populism and service. Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were idolized. Big business was not.
He graduated with a forestry degree from the University of Florida, working along the way and, at times, sleeping on friends' couches. Later, with help from a guidance counselor, Donegan earned a full-ride scholarship in a master's program that wove in threads of finance and management. He graduated in 1991 and landed a job at Georgia Pacific where a career with good income and growth potential was mapped out before him. But it didn't feel quite right.
When an offer came from Hancock Timber Resource Group, an upstart based in Boston that managed millions of acres of timberland portfolios, Donegan was tempted. The firm was the first in its field to manage sustainable forests as a secure and profitable investment. Donegan talked to friends, family and colleagues. Some pushed him on; some said the 5-year-old firm seemed too risky.
"I vetted and vetted and vetted," he said, "that's what I do. I do well at the vetting process and come out with actionable steps. I don't come away with ambiguity."
Hancock was a perfect fit. He'd work all night, sleep a few hours, shower and still beat others into the office. He rose through the ranks, earning an executive position by age 28. But after four years, he felt the hunger to test his own skills and instincts.
On his second attempt to launch a business, Donegan teamed with a former Hancock colleague, Scott Jones. They crafted Forest Capital Partners as a smaller version of Hancock, and past colleagues and clients soon called looking to switch. Yet the young partners vowed not to poach from their old employer, which had treated them well.
Forest Capital grew slowly, landing small deals and pounding the streets for new investors. Until February 2005, when they went big time. The partners agreed to buy2.2 million acres in six states from Boise Cascade for $1.65 billion. The deal, which included 629,000 acres in Oregon, was the largest purchase of standing timber in U.S. history.
Donegan made a side trip through Portland after surveying some of the new land. Forest Capital needed a West Coast office, he thought, as he called an old friend for an over-the-phone driving tour of the city's best neighborhoods - and schools. He'd married a college classmate, Laura, three years earlier. They'd put off a family until Forest Capital seemed stable, and now Laura was pregnant.
By July, the couple were moving into a stately home on Southwest Jackson Street, three houses down from one of his largest customers.
"I had definitely traded in the life of anonymity in Boston to one of deep familiarity in Portland," he said. "It was as intense an immersion as you can contemplate."
Earning a name for himself Then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski met Donegan in 2006, not long after Forest Capital bought the Boise Cascade land - some of which the governor had wanted for a new state forest.
After a laugh over how the state had been outbid, the pair discussed shared beliefs in timber's future, from sustainable logging to using woody biofuels.
"Matt was an oddity in his industry," Kulongoski said. "He was a voice of the timber industry looking forward as opposed to always looking back."
Over the next three years, Kulongoski appointed Donegan to three state boards.
Donegan had sat on a variety of national boards and commissions through the years. But now, at 40, Donegan whittled away at the posts that took him across the country so he could stay closer to home and his growing family.
Kulongoski appointed him to the Oregon Board of Higher Education in 2009, saying later that he believed in Donegan's ability to learn quickly and manage people. Donegan admits he didn't understand the full extent of Oregon's higher ed issues or how funding for schools had become so choked. But he knew how to research, he said later, and he knew how his own education at public universities had changed his life.
After Kitzhaber was elected in 2011, he appointed Donegan to a second term on the higher ed board, which elected him president. Then Kitzhaber brought him onto the education investment board, which is streamlining how schools statewide are organized with the goal of getting all the state's students to earn a high school diploma or equivalent.
"Matt was clearly a force that broke on the scene," said George Pernsteiner, former chancellor of the Oregon University System who worked side by side with Donegan through the Lariviere decision. "He integrated as quickly into the business community as with his leadership in the state."
Other state leaders and business colleagues consistently praise his calm, deliberate manner. They call him an independent and analytical thinker. Donegan says that's because he's always questioning things, even those closest to his heart.
Donegan recalled a meeting he had with some Jesuit priests at Springhill College in Alabama. He was stuck, tortured by questions he'd long held about his Catholic faith. Questions that would not have been welcomed by his parents.
"You must cultivate your own conscience," Donegan recalls being told. "If that conflicts with convention, go with your conscience."
Hearing that, he said, was life-changing. Since moving to Portland, Donegan has regularly attended Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Donegan continued to balance his burgeoning public life with regular trips to scope new timberland and survey existing holdings. At Forest Capital he was the peacemaker. Occasionally satellite offices filled with foresters and biologists clashed with the administrative Portland office.
"The central office saw them as a threat to the company. I saw entrepreneurs and strong leadership," Donegan said. "I was hoping to empower them and work toward a common goal. I loved seeing those local guys innovate. It would have been a failure if I had squashed that energy."
It was the same with the meeting over Lariviere. In the snarling crowd were faces Donegan knew from his posh West Hills neighborhood, from his business dealings, even from his church, where one man ended up in a pew next to him a few days later.
"I just tried to put myself in their shoes," said Donegan, who allowed all who'd signed up to speak. "They had driven a long way to be heard. Their willingness to shout, to argue was so good for the state."
Still, critics complained they felt it didn't matter what they said, that the vote was preordained and that Donegan and his board had simply done Kitzhaber's bidding.
Kitzhaber, who'd watched the meeting televised live, said later that Donegan had kept the meeting together well.
"Though," he added, "it went on a little longer than it had to."
Family implosion, divorce
Three months after the Lariviere meeting, the Donegans celebrated their daughter's sixth birthday with an evening party for about 20 children and their parents. The catered event featured games, dancing for the adults and appletini cocktails at the Donegans' new $3 million, 6,200-square-foot home on Southwest Montgomery Drive.
It was an attempt at normalcy for the children as the couple slogged through divorce proceedings. They still shared the home, but according to court documents had agreed neither would have intimate relations with others when the children were in the house.
Around 1 a.m., Matt Donegan went upstairs and, according to court filings, said he was puzzled to find the door closed to the attic bedroom where Laura Donegan slept. Typically, the door was left open for the children.
Matt Donegan walked in and found Laura Donegan in bed with a man. According to court records, Donegan took out his phone to photograph the violation of the agreement. The other man grabbed the phone as Laura Donegan jumped on Matt Donegan's back and hit his face. The scuffle then spilled into their neighborhood street as Matt Donegan chased the other man and yelled to neighbors for help, according to the records.
Police arrived and Laura Donegan was arrested and charged with fourth-degree assault. She later disputed some of her husband's allegations in court filings, but ultimately pleaded guilty to the charge and agreed to a court-ordered abuse prevention class that, if completed, could wipe the arrest from her record. She said later that she pleaded guilty only so as not to further delay the custody process.
Three days later, on March 2, 2012, Donegan presided over a daylong higher education board meeting in Salem. With a deep purple and gold-tinged bruise emanating from his left eye, Donegan heard an update on the search for a new president for University of Oregon. A vision of poise at a table of academics and business leaders, Donegan had spent the previous day securing an emergency restraining order that barred his wife from their home and vastly restricted her access to their children.
The picture that emerges from the inches-thick file amassing at the Multnomah County Courthouse doesn't match the image Matt Donegan had sought to build. Online, a story shares how the couple had their photo taken alongside President Barack Obama after donating $20,000 at a 2010 Kitzhaber campaign fundraiser. Or, the year before, when the couple leaned into each other at a party on a sunny rooftop restaurant to celebrate Laura's 40th birthday.
But court filings portray a couple who brought the worst out in each other. In custody-hearing testimony last month, Laura Donegan said she'd made some bad decisions, especially when she drank, but that she didn't deserve to have her time with her children cut so severely.
In July, as the divorce percolated, Donegan and his partner Scott Jones announced they'd sold Forest Capital Partners' holdings, including 573,000 acres it managed in Oregon. They'd tried to sell the company once before, but the deal fell apart along with the economy in late 2008. The new deal, estimated to be worth several billion dollars, was with Molpus Woodlands Group and Hancock Timber, the company where Donegan started his career.
The company he'd built was gone. For Donegan, the time had come to fight for his children.
View full sizeAs a co-founder of a timber investment firm, Matt Donegan pushed to sell 70,000 of their forest land to Minnesota. His partner Scott Jones was apprehensive. Jones and Donegan ultimately sealed the deal, setting aside the land for recreation. "€œMatt really dipped into his love of conservation and long-term social values and helped our company to the forefront.€"Matt Donegan testified about two dozen times this past legislative session, pushing the education investment board's plans. The board is seeking a system that within 10 years will put 40 percent of Oregon students on the path to a bachelor's degree or higher, and 40 percent toward a postsecondary credential.
The task is harder at home, where Donegan is looking to create normalcy for his three children, all under the age of 8. He worries how the past will affect them, he worries his community will judge them.
He was awarded full custody of his children last month after an emotional nine-
day custody hearing that played out in an open courtroom. As with most cases of this kind, he and his family will receive intense guidance over the next year, from court-appointed parenting coaches to the judge.
So far, the multimillionaire capable of building successful corporations and streamlining inefficient systems admits the work of a single father is grueling. He often falls asleep with the children during their 7:45 p.m. bedtime routine. He's up again at 5 a.m., checking his daughter's homework and scheduling play dates and practices.
"I'm taking the summer to just play with my kids," he said. "After that I will really ramp up my public service, knowing that always it will be secondary to my job as a parent." They recently spent a day in the Coast Range, hiking deep into the towering stands of Douglas firs and Sitka spruce.
In a place very much like this, about 30 years ago, Donegan found himself.
Yet on this day under the cool, deep green umbrella, he felt nothing.
"I always wanted to share my passion for the outdoors with my children," he said. "I want my kids to experience that. And someday, hopefully soon, I'll catch up with them."
-- Laura Gunderson
