Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith

Carr Center Fellow
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights
msmith

Matthew Smith is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights, a human rights organization based in Southeast Asia that supports human rights defenders and investigates human rights violations, combining two commonly separate areas of the human rights movement. Fortify Rights was the 2018 recipient of the Roger E. Joseph Prize for its “extraordinary work” to protect survivors of mass atrocity crimes and hold perpetrators accountable in Myanmar. Matthew was a 2014 Echoing Green Global Fellow and previously worked with Human Rights Watch, EarthRights International, and Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. His work has exposed genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, multi-billion-dollar corruption, and other human rights violations. Matthew has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, TIME, the Guardian, and other outlets. He has an M.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. from Le Moyne College.