Matthew Burnett American Bar Foundation

Matthew is senior program officer for Access to Justice at the American Bar Foundation (ABF). Prior to joining the ABF, Matthew was senior policy officer for legal empowerment at the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a program of the Open Society Foundations. His work included leading OSJI’s migrants’ equality project, supporting OSF partners in Puerto Rico on housing justice and displacement, providing technical assistance and field building support to legal empowerment efforts by OSF regional and national foundations in the US, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, and global advocacy and coordination on civil access to justice and Sustainable Development Goal 16.3. Prior to his work with the Open Society Foundations, Burnett helped to launch the Immigration Advocates Network, a groundbreaking collaboration between leading national immigrants’ rights organizations in the US, where he served first as associate director from 2007-2011 and then as director from 2011-2017.