Mr. Blessington, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, and resident of Arlington, Virginia, has been the Country Director of IFES Azerbaijan since June of 2005. From 1996 through 2004, he worked in several Balkan countries where he held a number of high-level positions involving public, international and electoral law and administration.

He became the IFES Project Director for Macedonia after opening the office there in July of 2000 and served in that position until closure of the office in December of 2004. Prior to this, he served in Pristina as legal advisor to the Director of Election Operations and Head of Registration under the authority of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. Previously he was a member of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission.

In 1998, he became the first director of the IFES Field Office in Tirana, Albania. In 1996, he was Chief Prosecutor of the Election Appeals Sub-Commission in Sarajevo, a quasi-judicial body that enforced the electoral provisions of the Dayton Agreement.

He has also worked on democracy projects in Armenia, Montenegro, Uzbekistan, Kyrghistan and Ukraine. From 1979 to 1993, he was an attorney at the Federal Election Commission in Washington, D.C. where he developed his knowledge and skills in political party and campaign finance regulation.

Mr. Blessington holds an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. He 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).