This week's Someone 2 Know came to Reno to play football at University of Nevada in the late 80's.

Matt Clafton says he fell in love with everything about the region and some three decades later, he has raised a family here, raised money and awareness for childhood cancer, and is in charge of building many of the industrial complexes vital to our local economy.

We caught up with him on the on property at the North Valleys Commerce Center.

From reviewing plans on a job site to making plans for a gathering at the stadium before a Wolf Pack game...Matt Clafton is deeply devoted to northern Nevada

"We've got skiing, we've got mountain biking, hiking, boating, Tahoe - it's just amazing all the things that we have in this community to offer”.

All of which draws more businesses to our region;

"The Amazons of the world, Walmart dot com and Target and every other - Zulilly - all these other folks, people were already going there, but when COVID hit, they flocked there even further.”

As senior vice president and regional manager for Alston Construction; Clafton as says that's good for the business he works for

"Alston construction is a design-build contractor.  We generally will partner and hire design consultants to work underneath us so we're able to build building economically.” Like industrial parks and warehouses that are cropping up everywhere - housing big names like Petco, Amazon and Zazzle.

"Frankly, our biggest challenge is actually having land.  believe it or not, having land to be able to develop.”

On the personal side, Clafton is a very proud alum of UNR;

"I was very fortunate to earn a football scholarship to the university of Nevada, came here in 1987, studied civil engineering and graduated in 1993.”

For the past 15 years Clafton has also served on the board and helped raise money for the Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation; "And 80 cents of every dollar we raise goes back into the community, so really, really proud of the statistic and I know the Foundation is, as well.”

Since its inception, Northern Nevada Children's Cancer Foundation has helped local families with $5.6 million in direct financial assistance

For more information on Northern Nevada Children’s Cancer Foundation, click this link https://www.nvchildrenscancer.org/

For more information on Alston Construction, click this link https://alstonco.com/