Meredith Applegate
Meredith Applegate is a Senior Programs Advisor at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), where she plays a strategic role in enhancing global programming efforts. Her responsibilities include offering high-level expertise to country offices across diverse technical areas, while working alongside IFES senior leadership in implementing institutional initiatives focused on program effectiveness, efficiency, and impact.
Having spent 12 years based out of country offices across three continents, she has significant experience developing, managing, and implementing democracy and elections programs in diverse contexts. She is particularly focused on social inclusion, civil society advocacy and development, voter and civic education, and election management. Applegate is an experienced trainer and an accrediting Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and Elections (BRIDGE) facilitator, with experience creating curricula and facilitating workshops for governments, election commissions, and disability and women’s rights organizations, as well as designing and implementing leadership programs.
Applegate was most recently IFES' country director for Guyana, where she led USAID's Youth Advocacy, Linkages, Leadership in Elections and Society (Youth ALLIES) program. The Youth ALLIES program used an innovative and intersectional civic education approach to build the skills and civic knowledge of young leaders to make positive change in their local communities.
Before joining the Guyana program, Applegate provided program oversight, advice, and support to IFES’s Sri Lanka and Bangladesh programs based out of Colombo. Prior to this, Applegate served as the program adviser for IFES Ukraine in Kyiv, with an emphasis on COVID-19 response, gender equality, and social inclusion. For IFES Burma from 2013-2016, which grew with her support into the largest election support initiative in the country, Applegate helped establish IFES’s program, forming relationships with the election management body, government officials, and civil society. While with IFES Indonesia, Applegate worked on a broad election portfolio that included a regional network to increase access for and monitor the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region.
Applegate has also worked on short to mid-term assignments on civic education, curriculum development, good governance, and violence against women, including for UN Women in Sierra Leone, the United Nations Development Programme in Moldova, and IFES projects in Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Nepal, and Timor-Leste.
Applegate holds a master’s degree in gender, development, and globalization from the London School of Economics and a bachelor’s degree in international relations and English from Northwestern University.
PUBLICATIONS
- IFES COVID-19 Briefing Series: Inclusion and Meaningful Political Participation. IFES, 2020. Co-authored with Virginia Atkinson and Rebecca Aaberg.
- How to Protect Gender Equality in Elections During COVID-19. IFES, April 2020.
- Intersectionality Assessment of Political and Electoral Participation in Ukraine. IFES, 2020. Co-authored with Virginia Atkinson, Oleksandra Palagnyuk, Yuliia Kryvinchuk, and Zhozefina Daiier.
- Sources of income and patterns of power: Gender and political finance in Ukrainian elections. Co-authored with Dr. Magnus Ohman.
- Considerations on Internet Voting: An Overview for Electoral Decision-Makers. IFES White Paper, 2020. Co-authored with Thomas Chanussot and Vladlen Bastysty.
- Indelible Ink in Elections: Mitigating Risks of COVID-19 Transmission While Maintaining Effectiveness. IFES, April 2020. Co-authored with Dr. Staffan Darnolf and Dr. Fernanda Buril.