Matt Segneri is the Executive Director of the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at the Harvard Kennedy School. CPL’s mission is to inspire and develop principled, effective public leaders in government, politics, civil society, and business.
He has 20+ years of leadership experience in organizations of different sizes and stages of development across the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Prior to joining CPL, he most recently served as the Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs (i-lab), which includes the Student i-lab, Alumni Launch Lab, and Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab. He oversaw the i-lab’s strategy and operations, led the President’s Innovation Challenge, and acted as the primary liaison to leaders across the University and in the local, national, and global innovation communities. Before leading the Harvard Innovation Labs, he was the Director of the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative. During that time, he served as co-head of the HBS New Venture Competition and played a lead role in developing the proposal that established the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative.
Previously, he was a senior leader on the Government Innovation team at Bloomberg Philanthropies. He co-led the inaugural Mayors Challenge, a $9 million competition to inspire American cities to develop bold solutions to common challenges, and oversaw initiatives on cross-sector collaboration and innovation teams around the world. In addition, he served as a senior advisor to Boston Mayor Tom Menino and focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, service and civic engagement, and safety and security. He also led projects at the Monitor Group and worked in the Special Advisor Program at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
He is a first-generation college student and holds an A.B. in Psychology from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He was recognized by the Boston Business Journal as one of Boston’s “40 Under 40” and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce as one of Boston’s “Ten Outstanding Young Leaders.” He is the Vice Chair of the National Board of Directors for Generation Citizen and serves as an advisor to New Politics and Project 351. He lives in Newton with his wife and three children.