Michael Getto
Chief of Party, Armenia
Michael Getto currently serves as chief of party for Armenia. He administers and supervises programming focused on voter registry development, election management, election code revision, political finance reform and overall electoral culture. Prior to Armenia, he served as IFES' Chief of Party for Tajikistan in support of the February 2010 local and parliamentary elections. He began his IFES career in Georgia where he coordinated technical assistance and stakeholder discussions in the process of developing a new election code to meet international standards.
Getto previously held positions at the International Republican Institute (IRI) supervising its regional parliamentary training and exchange program and serving as Country Director for the Belarus democracy program out of IRI’s office in Vilnius, Lithuania. There, he directed a parliamentary program targeted at three countries with European Union aspirations and coordinated a democracy-building program with a coalition of Belarusian democratic political parties and NGOs. He served as IRI's Resident Country Director in Moldova for three years leading democracy-development programs covering regional political party development, women's political and governance empowerment, parliamentary reform and quantitative survey research for the benefit of primary political parties. With IRI, he also worked as an election observer and a political and governance trainer throughout the Eurasia region.
A former public affairs journalist, Getto has an extensive background in development assistance in Eurasia and in domestic politics and governance in the United States. In addition to politics and governance, he worked in economic reform in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with a focus on mass privatization of government-owned enterprises and capital market development. Getto's American public affairs experience includes serving in the administration of former California Governor George Deukmejian, serving as press secretary for the successful gubernatorial campaign of Kenny Guinn in Nevada and on the staff of former California U.S. Senator Pete Wilson in Washington D.C.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Colorado in Boulder.