Matt Waters, CPA, MCR, CGLA is the founder of the Lease Accounting Institute and is the lead instructor for the CGLA program.

Matt has 20+ years of lease accounting experience. In addition to leading the Lease Accounting Institute, he currently serves as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Lease Administration and Lease Accounting at Cresa.

Matt is a recognized thought leader whose insights have been featured by Bloomberg, Reuters, Accounting Today, CFO, and Corporate Real Estate Journal. He is a frequent speaker at real estate and accounting events such as The CoreNet Global Summit, The NRTA National Conference, and BlackLine’s Beyond The Black.  Matt is a faculty member for CoreNet’s Master of Corporate Real Estate (MCR) program and NRTA’s Certified Commercial Lease Administrator (CCLA) program.  Matt is also the host of the newLeaseOn podcast.

Before joining Cresa, Matt led lease accounting and lease administration teams at CoStar Group, The Home Depot, and American Tower. CoStar provides lease administration and lease accounting software to over 2,500 companies. The Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement retailer with a vast portfolio of leases. American Tower is one of the largest REITs in the world, with over 100,000 real estate leases.

While at The Home Depot, Matt oversaw a project to consolidate the accounting for thousands of leases into one central area to streamline the flow of information and prepare for ASC 842 lease accounting changes.

Matt holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from Auburn University and an MBA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

In his personal life, Matt is a devoted husband, father to three teenage boys and an avid runner. He has completed 10+ running events at the marathon distance or longer including a 100-mile ultramarathon. In addition to running, he enjoys spending time outdoors hiking, biking, kayaking and camping.