Cherise Ann Matz is a technology writer and former educator who has spent more than a decade helping families make sense of the connected world. After a career as a middle school science teacher and later an instructional designer, she began writing about the place where technology and family life meet — the router in the closet, the speaker on the counter, and the thousand small decisions parents make about all of it. Her work has appeared in home technology publications and community education programs, and her popular workshop series, The Smart Home for Nervous Parents, has helped hundreds of families set up connected homes they actually trust.
Matz holds a bachelor's degree in education and a master's degree in instructional design, and she brings a teacher's instinct to every topic: first make it clear, then make it useful, then make it survivable when things go wrong. Her writing is grounded in a working smart home laboratory of her own — a decidedly imperfect one, she is quick to point out, where a leak sensor under the kitchen sink has saved the floor twice and where the voice assistant still cannot reliably tell the difference between two children with similar names.
She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner and their two children, a dog that triggers the motion sensors daily, and far too many smart plugs.