Matthew S. Smith

Matthew S. Smith (“Hezzy”) is a trilingual, Fulbright award-winning attorney with over a decade of experience working with, training, and advocating for persons with intellectual and other disabilities in the United States, Bangladesh, Mexico, and beyond. As Director of Advocacy Initiatives at the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD), he works to empower people with disabilities and their representative organizations around the world through training, technical assistance, and research to undertake impactful advocacy. He has helped to shape disability rights strategic litigation and decisions by regional human rights tribunals, as well as domestic courts in Bangladesh, Mexico, and the United States. His disability rights scholarship has appeared in collections published by Cambridge and Oxford university presses, U.S. and international law reviews and academic journals, and prominent online outlets. A lifelong advocate for his sister, who has Down syndrome, he began work for HPOD in Bangladesh in 2009 and has since managed U.S. federal- and state-funded projects of increasing sophistication in the United States and abroad. He received his J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law, and his B.A. from Harvard University.