Georgetown Democracy & Governance Students to go to El Salvador to Monitor Presidential Election in March

Posted on February 4th, 2009 emily 3 comments  Print This Post

El Salvador is holding its presidential election on March 15, 2009. Four M.A. candidates in the Democracy and Governance program at Georgetown University are partnering with the SHARE Foundation (http://www.share-elsalvador.org/) to spend their spring break as impartial Election Observers. To prepare, students will be holding seminars on the political history and current conditions of El Salvador and the principles of election observation, as well as fund-raising to pay for the trip. The students will be accredited and trained by El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal and on Election Day will observe the presidential election. They will be responsible for collecting data, reporting their observations, and contributing to the final report.

From left to right: Greg Trunz, Dani Bayar, Danielle Pearl, Emily Siedlak

Dani Bayar is a first-year candidate in the Democracy and Governance (DG) Program. In 2004, she graduated from Vassar College with a B.A. in political science. During her undergraduate career, Ms. Bayar traveled abroad to study religion and civil society in Russia. She then worked in the non-profit and government sectors in New York City, New York. In the fall of 2008, she moved to Washington, DC to begin the Democracy and Governance Program and work at Democracy International. Her previous election experience includes being a poll worker in Washington, DC on November 4, 2008.

Danielle Pearl studied International Affairs at the University of Georgia and graduated in 2006. During her time at University of Georgia, Ms. Pearl took it upon herself to do independent research in Croatia, where she studied media development and democratization and interviewed journalists. After graduation, she worked for a health-care development firm in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the fall of 2007 she joined the DG program. During her time at Georgetown, Ms. Pearl has worked for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, spent a summer as a media program development coordinator in Rwanda, and spent the fall of 2008 as Executive Assistant to the Head of Mission during the OSCE’s observation of the U.S. elections. She currently is a project assistant at Democracy International.

Emily Siedlak graduated from Miami University (OH) in 2008 with a double-major in Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs and Spanish, as well as a minor in Latin American Studies. While at Miami, she took part in the Transatlantic Seminar on the European Union and wrote an analysis of relations between the European Union and NATO after enlargement. In the fall of 2006, Ms. Siedlak spent a semester in Valencia, Spain with the University of Virginia’s Hispanic Studies Program. The next year, she was an intern-scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies America’s Program. After graduation, Ms. Siedlak moved to Washington, DC to intern with the U.S. Department of State and then began the DG program in fall 2008. Her only election experience was as an impartial observer in Northern Virginia on November 4, 2008. She is currently a project assistant at Democracy International.

Greg Trunz went to Susquehanna University and graduated with a B.A. in political science with a minor in economics. In 2007, he participated in the PLUS Project, a service learning program in the Philippines. Since moving to Washington, DC and starting the DG program in the fall of 2007, Mr. Trunz has worked for the State Department in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, where he started in the Office of International Religious Freedom and then moved to a position in the Office of Asia and Western Hemisphere Affairs. Observing in El Salvador will be Greg’s first experience as an observer.