David Smith

Co-founder & Chair
David is a journalist and entrepreneur based in Chisinau. He first came to Moldova in 2012 as a Peace Corps Volunteer and never left. David writes the Moldova Matters Newsletter, the top source of English language news and analysis in Moldova (cited by the New York Times, Washington Post, FAZ, RFERL and others). He is also the President of the Moldova Small Enterprise Alliance, the largest cross-sectoral small business association in Moldova. David previously co-founded and operated the Smokehouse BBQ restaurant in Chisinau (2015-2023). He is a dual American-Moldovan citizen. 

Clayton King

Co-founder and Treasurer

Clayton is the Founding Director of the Alliance for Competitive Elections. He is a former Program Officer for Moldova with the International Republican Institute, where he administered grants and programming, including conducting election observation missions for the 2024 Moldovan Presidential Election and the 2025 Moldovan Parliamentary Election. He was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova (2017-2019) and holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the Korbel School of International Studies.

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Lyndon Allin

Co-Founder and Board Member

Lyndon Allin is currently a Senior Advisor at CMI - Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation, focused primarily on CMI's programs in Ukraine. From 2021-24 he served as Head of Investigations for VEON Group, a mobile telephone operator with operations in Ukraine, Central Asia, and other emerging markets. Prior to that, he was a Senior Associate with the law firm of Baker McKenzie in Washington. In 2011-16, he served as a US State Department secondee to OSCE missions in Moldova, where his portfolio included the “5+2” settlement process, and Ukraine, where he helped establish the Special Monitoring Mission and participated in negotiations in Donetsk Oblast which resulted in the release of 21 hostages in 2014. In 2010-13, he co-organized and participated in the Track 2 Transnistrian Conflict Resolution Task Force. He began his legal career with Skadden Arps in London and also practiced law with Akin Gump in Washington. Earlier in his career, Lyndon worked at the US Embassy in Chisinau in 2008-09 as an IREX Embassy Policy Specialist focused on Russia's non-military means of influence in Transnistria and at Harvard's Kennedy School in 2000-01 on the US-Russia National Security Project . He is a graduate of Duke University, Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, and Georgetown Law, and is a member of the bar in New York State and the District of Columbia.

Mark Sawyer

Board of Directors

Mark Sawyer is an open-source investigator and freelance journalist. To his friends, he’s “the Moldova guy.” His investigative work has focused on online narratives impacting trust in elections as well as foreign influence campaigns targeting communities in Europe, the United States, and Africa. He previously worked as a Program Officer at the International Republican Institute (IRI), where he designed and managed taxpayer-funded programs to support democracy in Moldova. He joined the Moldova Resilience Fund to support Moldova’s independent media and show the positive power that private networks of citizens can have apart from government funding.