Forgot your password?
ACE Practitioners' Network Team
The team behind the scene - the ACE Practitioners' Network Team - is composed of five core members: one Project Coordinator, two Network Facilitators/Policy Specialists, one Finance and Administration Officer and one Administration/Technical Support Assistant. The Team also has two part time support members, a Senior Programme Officer and a Web Developer/Manager. The ACE Practitioners' Network Team is based at the IDEA headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.
Network Facilitator/Policy Specialist
Stina Larserud has worked for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in Stockholm since 2003. 
Her prime focus has been on electoral system design and she was the lead writer for the "Electoral Systems" topic area of the ACE Encyclopaedia and the electoral systems module in BRIDGE version 2 and was one of two authors of the 2007 IDEA publication on electoral systems and gender quotas. Having studied in Sweden and in Australia, Stina holds a Master’s degree in political science from the University of Uppsala, Sweden in comparative politics and institutional design.
Stina acts as a Chairperson of a polling station commission at elections and referendums in Sweden.
Contact Stina by clicking here.
Network Facilitator/Policy Specialist
Sara Staino has worked with the Electoral Processes
Programme of International IDEA since early 2004.
In this capacity, she has performed several functions; representing IDEA in the ACE Project Management Committee tasked with the conceptualization and implementation of the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network; as a lead writer for the "Electoral Management" topic area of the ACE Encyclopaedia; and as IDEA Project Manager for the ACE Course Correction process. Sara is also co-author and editorial anchor of the newly published IDEA handbook on “Electoral Management Design”.
Sara was previously a University Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Örebro, Sweden, teaching International Studies and Electoral Management and Observation. She has been an international election observer in a number of electoral observation missions for the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and regularly acts as a Chairperson of a polling station commission in Sweden. Sara is a semi-accredited BRIDGE Facilitator and a graduate of the University of Örebro, Sweden, in political science.
Contact Sara by clicking here.
Administration/Technical Support
Vincent Kearns is originally from Melbourne Australia.
Before working for the ACE Practitioners' Network Team in Stockholm, Vincent worked for the Australian Government. His duties, amongst other things, was creating and maintaining databases that tracked the many people visiting or migrating to Australia and representing the Government when dealing with the myriad of different ethnicities that made Australia their home. Vincent has a degree in Social Science from RMIT University in Melbourne.
Finance and Administration Officer
Eralda Vahidi has studied agriculture and economical politics of agriculture at the University of Kamza in Tirana and has worked in the private sector as well as with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Albania. She has held several positions within UNDP; interpreter, finance and administrative assistant and public awareness and information coordinator and she worked as an administrative assistant for OPTO International in Sweden from August 2004 until she joined International IDEA in 2005.
Support Staff
Paul Guerin is a Senior Programme Officer in the Electoral
Processes Team at International IDEA. Paul’s main focus on ACE is
the establishment of the Regional Electoral Resource Centres and
the "Regions & Countries" networking component
of the ACE site. As an original designer of BRIDGE (Building Resources
in Democracy, Governance & Elections), Paul is also working on version 2 of
the innovative, modular professional development course for electoral
administrators. His other projects currently include the Electoral Assistance
project which culminated in an international meeting on Ottawa in May 2006 “Towards more sustainable
and effective electoral assistance” and the subsequent development of a course
for donor and implementing agencies.
Paul’s work for the past 14 years has been primarily focused on electoral assistance programmes, capacity development programmes and observation for the United Nations, the European Commission and other international organisations particularly in democratisation processes in transitional and post-conflict countries, in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia.
Jim Carrico is a web developer based in Vancouver, Canada. He has been responsible for all aspects of the technical development of the ACE Project website, and accompanying CD-ROMs, since the project's inception in 1997. 
The multilingual web-based editing interface created for the original launch of ACE, for use by dozens of writers and editors dispersed around the globe, was one of the first of its kind. More recently, he has guided the technical evolution of the project from a static repository of documents (incorporated into the current site as the ACE Encyclopaedia component) to a dynamic database-driven information networking system. The "Electoral Advice" component of ACE, and accompanying "Expert's Workspace" represents a new dimension for the project, requiring the management, in addition to the tens of thousands of documents comprising the information resources of the project, of hundreds of new active members.
