Dan Blessington

Dan Blessington, who joined USAID in 2015, has extensive and varied experience in international democracy and governance. For over nine years, he served as Chief of Party for programs in the Balkans and Caucuses focusing on election law reform, campaign finance, election administration, civil society, political parties and voter and civic education. Previously, he had been the first Chief Prosecutor of the OSCE’s Election Appeals Sub-Commission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he enforced relevant provisions of the Dayton Accords. Since joining USAID in February of 2010, he has assisted embassies and missions in Kyrgyzstan, Tunisia, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Nigeria and South Sudan. In November of 2014, he travelled to Kabul as part of an assessment of USG election support to Afghanistan. Mr. Blessington returned to Kabul in the fall of 2015 as USAID’s Governance Team Lead in the Office of Democracy and Governance and served as Senior Elections’ Advisor until 2019. He is presently Senior Elections Advisor for USAID Ethiopia. He received an LL.M in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University Law Center in 1998 and is the author of From Dayton to Sarajevo: Enforcing Election Law in Post War Bosnia and Herzegovina, 13 Am. U. Int'l L. Rev. 553 (1998).