Matthew R. Jelacic
Matthew Jelacic is an independent designer, scholar, and consultant focused on community-based
responses to climate change migration, homelessness, and traumatic urbanization. Currently, he is a Master of Public
Health candidate at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a consultant to the the MIT Lincoln
research and development Laboratory. From 2016-2020, he served as the Senior Infrastructure Policy
Adviser at the US Agency for International Development where he spearheaded the first U.S.
Government study of the impact of climate change displacement on urbanization in resource constrained
communities. He also provided design consultation and technical assistance on a range of USAID
projects including the Al Basheer Emergency Trauma Center in Amman, Jordan. Prior to joining USAID
he practiced and taught design for over twenty years. Matt received degrees in architecture from Pratt
Institute, where he was awarded the AIA Henry Adams Medal, and Harvard University’s Graduate School
of Design. He was a Harvard Loeb Fellow in 2004, studied international human rights law at Oxford
University in 2008, was a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Scholar in Residence in 2009, a USAID
Franklin Fellow from 2014-16, and was appointed a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars. His design practice has won numerous international awards and his work has been
widely published. From 1991-2001 he worked in the atelier of artist Louise Bourgeois and in 2004 he
became a licensed contractor.