Matthew’s Story

Matthew Berdyck is a relentless survivor. He got his start late in life, at age 34, a disabled man with a dream of becoming a filmmaker, activist, and enterprise investigative journalist.

In 2011, that dream began to come true when Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim solicited his first TV pilot only ten months into his film career, working with Mad Magazine’s Sergio Aragones.

After Adult Swim passed on his show, he focused on creating the first ever, first-person film about homelessness in film history. The film was released in 2013, distributed by Distrify Media, called Blame Reagan. He created the film by living on the streets of major cities along the west coast for 18 month.

One month after the release of the film, he received a $500,000 angel investment into his film and activism career from a Google software developer in Silicon Valley

He then went on tour with 2022 Grammy Winner, Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) and Rod Morgenstein (Winger, Dixie Dreggs, Berklee College of Music) to create the short film ‘Philadelphia Experiment: Ra (Live)’, a ground breaking visual effects and audio experimental film.

In 2014, Berdyck then turned his focus to environmental reform. He began traveling the country investigating and exposing toxic waste sites, cancer clusters, the redevelopment of still polluted Superfund sites, and exposing government corruption, for his former organization SuperfundResearch.org.

In 2015, he became a self-made millionaire, with a net worth of $2.6 million dollars.

For the following five years, (2014-2019) he traveled to thousands of cities, fighting hundreds of powerful causes, including becoming the first person to blow the whistle on the corruption at the Region 5 EPA that led to the Flint Water Crisis.

In 2017, he was credited in the Roanoke Times for exposing the largest corruption scandal in Virginia history.

In 2018, he founded an independent media outlet, Daily Independent Journal. He also introduced his own personal brand of custom high-end Japanese wagyu beef, called Wandering Plains Wagyu.

In 2019, he merged Daily Independent Journal and SuperfundResearch.org into one organization, ToxicWasteSites.org

In 2021, he began distributing military leaks to the New York Times, generating thousands of news articles across the globe.

In 2023, he signed with a legendary national fire and weather videography team, to provide footage to major media outlets, like CNN, FOX, Weather Channel, ABC, NBC, Accuweather, Weather Nation, and other national and local media outlets.