Matt Kudo ’21
Cofounder, MeshMap
Majors:
{{https://www.wm.edu/majorsminors/internationalrelations/index.php, International Relations}} & {{https://www.wm.edu/as/data-science/index.php, Data Science}}
Matt Kudo’s William & Mary journey started the moment he set foot on campus at Day for Admitted Students. He came to DFAS with an interest in international politics and a desire to improve the world, he just didn’t know which niche he would specialize in nor which school would be right for him. That day, he attended an AidData event that inspired him to pursue data science at W&M. “I double-majored in international relations and data science to gain a breadth of skills which enable me to contribute to a just and sustainable world,” he says.
As a James Monroe Scholar at William & Mary and a 2021 and 2022 Rhodes Scholarship finalist, Matt’s interests were at the intersection of international development, security and harnessing data to inform development policy and practice better. In addition to his independent research, Matt supported community-based development projects on health and education in the Dominican Republic and the Philippines, leveraging skills from intercultural collaboration to software development. As a team lead in W&M’s geoLab and an active member of the Global Research Institute, he fostered student-led research on campus and strived to create spaces for student growth and achievement. After graduation, he worked at the Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs to support students applying for prestigious international scholarships.
When the COVID-19 pandemic ground the world to a stop, Matt turned his focus to the myriad challenges facing global cities and their residents, starting with a Civic Innovation Corps fellowship at the NYC Department of City Planning. Then, as science, tech and society lead for Spectra Cities, he experimented with using virtual reality and cooperative governance as methods to build more sustainable, livable and affordable cities. In 2024, Matt cofounded MeshMap, a startup aiming to build an open-source, decentralized 3D map of the world with use cases in urbanism and augmented reality. MeshMap won first prize in gaming in the Solana Renaissance Hackathon, a global competition that featured over 8,000 participants, and earned one of 10 spots in the Colosseum startup accelerator, a $60 million fund focused on pre-seed investments.
