Matt Lira is a Republican strategist who most recently served as Special Assistant to the President for Innovation Policy and Initiatives at the White House Office of American Innovation during the Trump administration. For the past decade, Matt’s work has placed him at the cross-section of politics, government and the emerging digital economy.

Prior to joining the White House, Lira served as Senior Advisor to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and later Kevin McCarthy. In this capacity, he served on the senior leadership staff, participated in daily strategy discussions on the issues facing the House of Representatives and worked to modernize Congressional institutions as both a communications and public policy platform.

Lira’s career is a record of firsts: the first blog row on Capitol Hill, the first mobile app in Congress, the first use of the Facebook API by Congress, and he organized and held the first Congressional Hackathon to bring stakeholders together to discuss improvements to the legislative process. He launched the Citizen Co-Sponsor and YouCut platforms to improve the ability of House Republicans to engage directly with the public. YouCut was the first – and, at present, only – digital democracy platform directly tied to a real vote on the House Floor. Over 2.5 million Americans joined the YouCut community to vote on policy proposals.

In 2015, Matt served as an Institute of Politics Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, focused on the impact of the digital economy on politics and governance. In 2012, Matt was recognized by Tech Crunch as one of the “20 Most Innovative People in Democracy.”