Primary Job Title Founder and Executive Director Primary Organization Center on Rural Innovation
Location Hartland, Vermont, United States Regions New England, Northeastern US Gender Male
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Matt Dunne has focused his career on the intersection of rural policy and technology. He served 11 years in the Vermont House and Senate, enacting the first state’s first brownfields and downtown redevelopment program, broadband grants and legislation that accelerated VT’s craft beer boom. He helped grow a VT-based software company to over 100
people, was Associate Director of the Rockefeller Center on Public Policy at Dartmouth College, and was appointed director of AmeriCorps*VISTA under Clinton, where he led PowerUp, one of the first national efforts to bridge the digital divide, and launched an Entrepreneur Corps to focus on micro-finance in high need communities. In 2007, he started Google’s Community Affairs division out of a former bread factory in White River Jct, VT, where he led all local US philanthropy and engagement, including the Google Fiber rollout and orchestrating educational and development initiatives in Google’s data center communities across rural America.
Matt is now the Founder and Executive Director of the Center on Rural Innovation, an organization dedicated to building the economy of rural America, and has an appointment at the MIT Media Lab.
