Matt Keller

Matt Keller is Senior Director of the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE. He is leading an effort that challenges teams from around the world to create innovative technologies that will bring children -- on their own and with each other -- from non-literacy to literacy in 18 months in places where quality learning environments are difficult to access. Previously, as Vice-President of One Laptop per Child, Keller led OLPC’s ground-breaking literacy project in remote Ethiopia testing the theory that children from non-literate communities could teach themselves to read using tablets filled with off-the-shelf applications. In his role at OLPC, Keller also worked in scores of countries in Central and South Asia and across the African continent to bring connected laptops filled with innovative learning content 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 – the pre-eminent citizens lobby in the United States -- where he led the organization’s efforts in Washington, DC to enact the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. 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.

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