Matt Klein

A Webby-winning writer, global speaker and “Top Voice in Market Research,” Klein is a trusted advisor, empowering organizations to make sense of and stay ahead of cultural change. With a decade of experience in trend forecasting, innovation research, and strategic comms, Klein partners with brands, investors, journalists, philanthropies, and the UN to provide provocative explanations for the emergent and author future-proofing strategies.

Advising The Met to McDonald’s, Klein's decoded the cultural implications of fandom for the NBA, GLP-1s for Novo Nordisk, mental health crisis for UNICEF, and Gen AI for Google.

Klein is the founder of ZINE, a cultural intelligence and sensemaking think tank, advising organizations on how to author tomorrow. With +1M reads across +150 countries, ZINE publishes original research on overlooked social shifts — how people relate to technology, media, institutions, and each other. ZINE empowers with data and perspectives for more human-centered strategies, publishing openly to shape broader discourse.

He’s a relied upon source for the NYT, WSJ, DAZED, VICE, NPR, and Playboy, and former contributor to Forbes where he served as a media critic. He's also a speaker at SXSW, Fast Company and MoMA, and guest lecturer at universities including NYU and The New School.

He’s the author of the META Trends Report, an annual meta-analysis commenting on the zeitgeist, Audience Capture, a zine exploring the dangerous dynamics of audiences, co-founder of The Tiny Awards, honors for the cozy web, and creator of The Understanding Media Seminar Series in partnership with The McLuhan Institute.

Completing the first-ever joint degree in Psychology and Film & Media Studies from Franklin & Marshall College, Klein’s honors dissertation and concentration was in CyberPsychology: Online Sharing as Identity Construction. He also holds certificates in network theory, crisis communications, post-growth entrepreneurship and foresight from the Institute for the Future, The Future Laboratory and Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies.

Klein’s focus is to increase cultural fluency and digital literacy, empowering autonomy to author better futures.