Sef Ashiagbor is NDI’s Deputy Director for Peace, Climate and Democratic Resilience. She has spent more than 25 years in the democracy and governance sector, conducting original research, developing program approaches, designing and evaluating programs, and guiding strategy development for political party, legislative, civil society and electoral integrity support programs.  She frequently speaks on a wide range of issues, including: the crisis of representation, partisan polarization, political financing and party policy development. For more than a decade, as the Institute’s Senior Advisor for Political Party Programs, she served as a thought leader, providing technical support to country teams as they designed, implemented and evaluated political party programs around the world. Sef has managed diverse teams in the United States and abroad and has also overseen program-specific and department-wide budgets. She previously served in NDI offices in Ghana and Malawi, and has led assessments to countries as diverse as Albania, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, Uganda and Ukraine. Prior to joining NDI, she worked in humanitarian assistance and at the World Bank. Sef holds an M. Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in History from Selwyn College, Cambridge. She speaks French.