Head of Programs: Heather J. Heyer

Heather is the Head of Programs at the United States Center for Electoral Support (USICES). She is a competent operations manager with unbeatable skills in program design, innovative solutions, systems and process improvements to increase efficiency in voting programs and election administration as a whole. She is an advocate for creating networks of election officials and sharing of experiences to improve the integrity of election processes that positively impact on the voter experience.

Serving as Voting Process Administrator with the Elections Division of the City and County of Denver, Colorado, Heather ensures compliance with federal, state and local elections laws pertaining to voter registration, analyzes data and current trends to create staffing plans for Voter Registration and Polling Centers, conducts training for elections judges, and ensures staff are trained in the Statewide Colorado Registration and Election (SCORE) system. Heather also leads the Voter Experience Redesign project to reduce the amount of paper and time a voter spends at a Voter Service and Polling Center. Heather also served with the City of Minneapolis, Elections and Voter Services and the City and County of Denver, Elections Division working on Absentee Ballot Operations and as a Research and Policy Analyst respectively. During graduate school, Heather was a teaching assistant for three courses, Managing Conflict: Negotiation, Regression Analysis, and Multivariate Techniques.

Heather exhibited her exceptional program leadership quality at Memorial Blood Centers where she conducted a needs assessment of departmental training resulting in designing and implementing an innovative training program for critical thinking skills across field operations. As an Executive Team Leader at Target, she improved staff attendance by 13% over a period of 4 months through individual coaching, maximizing productivity and profitability while keeping the focus on critical business priorities.

Executive Director: Henry Atem

Henry is the Executive Director of the United States Center for Electoral Support (USICES) and directs the programs and projects of USICES. Henry is a career election expert with over ten years of professional experience in election administration processes working for an Election Management Body (EMB), nonprofit and Intergovernmental Organizations both at National and International levels. Henry has served for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance as a trainer, conducting training needs assessment, development customized training contents, and facilitating in training election officials from over ten nations in Africa using the most comprehensive capacity development tool available to election officials worldwide, BRIDGE (Building Resources in Democracy, Governance, and Elections). He also served with the African Union and the Carter Center in their International Election Observation Missions, assessing the conduct of elections in various countries and suggesting recommendations for improvements.

Before joining USICES, Henry served in different capacities in the field of election administration. He served as Director at the Center for Democracy and Electoral Studies (CDES), Cameroon. Under his leadership, CDES Cameroon conducted over 40 training programs for women and youth leaders, media professionals including leaders of association of PWDs and IDPs, advocated for the historic increase of women in Cameroon legislature and local governments and monitored the conduct of electoral processes with recommendations to improve the process. He also chaired an Advisory Commission for Electoral Reform to make recommendations that promote election integrity in Cameroon. He also served as Head of Electoral Operations with Cameroon’s Electoral Commission (ELECAM), in one of the country’s most contested divisions where he was charged with voter registration, training, and voting operations. Prior to his work with ELECAM, he served as Election Projects Officer with the Global Network for Good Governance; a Cameroon based civic engagement organization.

He holds an MA in Electoral Policy and Administration from the School of Advanced Studies, Pisa – Italy and a Graduate Certificate in Election Administration from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota – U.S.A.  He is also a Democracy and Governance fellow within the Department of Government at Georgetown University –U.S.A.

Doug Chapin is a renowned expert in election administration. He is chair of the United States International Center for Electoral Support and director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration (Election Academy) at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota – U.S.A. Chapin came to the Humphrey School after ten years at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where he served as director of Election Initiatives for the Pew Center on the States. Under his leadership, Pew’s elections team successfully lobbied for enactment of military and overseas voting reform in Congress and state legislatures; enlisted dozens of states and technology partners like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to provide official voting information online and via mobile technology; and worked with election officials, academics, and technical experts to design and implement efforts to upgrade the nation’s voter registration systems. Prior to serving at Pew, Chapin was an attorney in private practice specializing in election and ethics law.

He served as elections counsel to the Democrats on the U.S. Senate Rules Committee from 1997 to 2000, where he focused on federal election legislation and participated in the review of the disputed 1996 Senate election in Louisiana. He holds a law degree from Georgetown University, a master of public administration degree from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an A.B. in politics from Princeton University.