Matt Keller

Director, Impact and Inclusion, The Algorand Foundation

Bio Current as of June 2, 2022

Matt Keller leads Inclusion and Impact for the Algorand Foundation. Matt leads the development of strategies designed to increase the use of the Algorand Blockchain in all matters relating to financial and social inclusion, and positive environmental impact. He Identifies and supports institutions, entrepreneurs, and companies with bold ideas that call for the use of blockchain technology to assist in the effort to reach the 1.7 billion people in the world with no access to financial institutions and the capital those institutions hold. He also seeks out and supports those who have ideas about how to utilize blockchain technology in the world’s efforts to combat climate change. Matt was Executive Director of the $15 Million Global Learning XPRIZE sponsored by Elon Musk. He led the effort that challenged 125 teams from 40 countries around the world to create technologies designed to bring children from non-literacy to literacy in 15 months in places where access to learning is scarce. For six years he spent most of his time laying the groundwork for the field test in over 150 remote villages in Eastern Tanzania by partnering with both the United Nations World Food Programme and UNESCO.

Previously, as Vice-President of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Keller led OLPC’s ground-breaking literacy project in Ethiopia testing the theory that children from non-literate communities could teach themselves to read using only tablets. In his role at OLPC, Keller worked in Asia and across the African continent working with governments to bring laptops to children in those regions. Keller has worked as a senior program officer with the United Nations World Food Programme serving in Rome, Italy, where he worked both as a lawyer and as a key advocate in raising global awareness around the issue of child hunger, working with governments, the private sector, and citizens from dozens of countries around the world. He has served as Legislative Director for Common Cause in Washington, DC where he led the organization’s efforts to enact the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, working closely with Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and his staff to establish grassroots support across the United States on behalf of that legislation.

He was Vice-President of Democracy 21, where he helped to lead the reform movement’s lobbying efforts on campaign finance reform, voting reform, transparency, and disclosure on Capitol Hill. Mr. Keller has also served as a legislative aide in the United States Senate, as a lawyer working on behalf of migrant farmworkers in the Southwest United States, and as a Jesuit Volunteer in Portland, Maine.