Matthew Wilson

Matt Wilson is the Deputy Director for the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program.

From 2008 to 2014, Wilson worked with the Open Society Scholarship Programs, where he managed program development, university partnerships, and oversight of undergraduate and graduate level scholarships for activists from Asia and the Balkans. He had a particular focus on program development in Burma, Southeast Asia, and South Korea, where he helped pilot one of the first private scholarship programs for North Korean defectors. In 2014, he joined the Global Drug Policy Program to oversee university partnerships and grow the program’s policy reform efforts in Asia. His current work is focused on accountability for human rights violations in the name of drug control, promotion of health- and rural development-led drug policies, increasing the direct participation of small scale producers of illicit crops in policy discussions, and reducing criminalization and incarceration in regional drug control policy.

Prior to joining Open Society, he worked for Long Island University’s Global College as Associate Director, co-leading undergraduate students on nine-month academic programs focused on social justice in China, Thailand, India, and Turkey. In 2007 he worked for the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Erturk.

Matt received a BA from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN and an MA in human rights studies from Columbia University in New York.