Bio
Sean Martin McDonald is the co-founder of Digital Public, which builds legal trusts to protect and govern digital assets. He is a lawyer and the CEO of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning global technology social enterprise; a fellow at the Duke Center on Law & Technology; a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab; and a former affiliate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center.
Sean is an adviser to Digital Democracy and the Ethics and AI Committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a researcher and writer whose work has been published by the International Review of the Red Cross, Foreign Policy, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Cornell University’s Legal Informatics Institute, IRIN and Innovations, among others.
He holds a J.D./M.A. from American University, with specialization in international law and alternative dispute resolution, and is a member of the New York State Bar Association. Sean’s research focuses on civic data trusts as vehicles that embed public interest governance into digital relationships and markets.