Sean McDonald

Sean Martin McDonald was a Non-Resident Fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS, focusing on the use of civic trusts to build public interest digital governance. Sean is the CEO of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning, social impact, open source messaging company. FrontlineSMS’ messaging software is used by thousands of organizations to improve the lives of millions of people in more than 200 countries. Under Sean’s leadership, FrontlineSMS spun out several successful organizations, built a non-profit consultancy, and a self-sustaining open software social enterprise.

Sean has worked at the intersection of law, technology, and public interest governance for his entire career. Prior to Frontline, he worked in international development, the US Senate, and public interest international law. He is on the Board of Directors of the Center for Internet & Society and the Environmental Peacebuilding Institute. Sean is an advisor to DoSomething.org, Digital Democracy, ECPAT-USA, and TechChange.

Sean is a researcher on the law and use of data in the public interest. He’s the author of Ebola: A Big Data Disaster and a number of other articles focused on equity, law, and technology.