Elliot Mitchell

Elliot Mitchell serves as Senior Programs Advisor at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). He previously held positions as Acting and Deputy Regional Director for Africa. With over 16 years of experience developing and managing election-related programs, he currently supports a large and diverse portfolio of IFES’s work worldwide. In addition to expertise in program design, implementation, evaluation, and reporting, Mitchell has played a key role in high-level engagement with partners and donors, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Global Affairs Canada, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and the European Union.

Mitchell first joined IFES in 2009, providing programmatic oversight for the organization’s $50 million USAID-funded Afghanistan election assistance contract. From 2011 to 2015, he managed IFES’s East and Southern Africa portfolio, leading programs in Kenya, Lesotho, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and working with the African Union’s Democracy and Electoral Assistance Unit. After four years at Counterpart International - where he oversaw democracy and governance programs across Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Morocco, and Sudan - Mitchell returned to IFES in 2020. In his current role, he serves as a senior representative on key initiatives requiring strategic coordination, communication and delivery, both internally and externally, with IFES leadership, partners, and external stakeholders.

He holds a master’s degree in democratic governance from the University of Cape Town, where he focused his research on African elections, and a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Vanderbilt University.