Sean McDonald builds governance for technology and technology for governance. Sean is the co-founder of Digital Public, which uses data governance design and trusts to help communities protect and govern digital assets. He is a lawyer and the CEO of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning public interest technology company. Sean is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a Hivos Digital and Creative Futures Fellow, and a Research Fellow at Duke’s Center for Law and Technology.

Sean is also a researcher and writer whose work has been published by the Review of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Brookings Institution, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Foreign Policy, Cornell’s Legal Informatics Institute, The New Humanitarian, the Center for Internet & Society, among others. Sean is an advisor to Digital Democracy, the IEEE's Ethics and AI Committee, and data governance research projects at Tilburg University and the University of Oslo. Sean was formerly a Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab and an Affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. He holds a JD/MA from American University, with specializations in international law and alternative dispute resolution.