Full Name
Matthew Mitchell
Job Title
Tech Fellow
Company
The Ford Foundation
Speaker Bio
Matt Mitchell is a hacker and Tech Fellow at The Ford Foundation. Matt is working with the BUILD and Technology and Society teams at Ford Foundation to develop cybersecurity strategy, technical assistance offerings, and safety and security measures for the foundation’s grantee partners.

Committed to using his vast digital skills—as hacker, developer, operational security trainer, security researcher, and data journalist—for good, Matt has worked in various capacities at the intersection of technology and social justice.

Formerly the Director of Digital Safety & Privacy for Tactical Tech (also known as the Tactical Technology Collective). Matt worked leading security of Digital Safety & Privacy, at Tactical Tech (also known as the Tactical Technology Collective). In his work there Matt leads security training efforts, curricula, and organizational security for the organization in their mission to raise awareness about privacy, provide tools for digital security, and mobilize people to turn information into action.

Matt is a well known security researcher, operational security trainer, and data journalist who founded & leads CryptoHarlem ( https://twitter.com/cryptoHarlem ), impromptu workshops teaching basic cryptography tools to the predominately African American community in upper Manhattan. Matt trained people as an independent trainer for Global Journalist Security) in digital safety &security. Matt worked training activists in operational and information security. His personal work focused on marginalized, aggressively monitored, over-policed populations in the United States. He was a tech advisor to the Human Rights Foundation (https://www.hrf.org), the Internet Freedom Festival (https://internetfreedomfestival.org). Matt was former on the advisory board to many organizations including: the Open Technology Fund (https://www.opentech.fund/about/people/advisory-council ), the Digital Security Exchange (https://dsx.us), Citizen Clinic at Berkeley University Center for Long Term Cybersecurity (https://cltc.berkeley.edu/about-us/citizen-clinic/), The 4th Amendment Center at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and TurnOut (https://www.turnout.link/).

He was a 2016 Mozilla Foundation / Ford Foundation Open Web Fellow, embedded at Color of Change a racial justice / social justice organization; ( more on the program at Mozilla https://advocacy.mozilla.org/en-US/open-web-fellows/fellows2016 & Ford http://www.fordfoundation.org/ideas/equals-change-blog/posts/announcing-the-2016-ford-mozilla-open-web-fellows/ ). Matt was also an Internet Freedom Festival 2016 Fellow (https://internetfreedomfestival.org/internet-freedom-festival-fellowship-program/ ) , a New America 2016 CyberSecurity Initiative Fellow, an Institute For The Future “Future For Good” Fellow ( http://www.iftf.org/what-we-do/who-we-are/fellows/ ).

In the past he worked as a data journalist at The New York Times and a developer at CNN, Time Inc, NewsOne/InteractiveOne/TVOne/RadioOne, ,AOL/Huffington Post, & Essence Magazine.
Matthew Mitchell