Ambassador Archil Gegeshidze was appointed Executive Director of the Levan Mikeladze Foundation in November 2016. Prior to that Amb.Gegeshidze served as Georgia’s ambassador to the United States for more than three years.He joined diplomatic service from academia working as a senior fellow at Georgia’s renowned think tank – The Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS). More than a decade of work at GFSIS was primarily related with research and training.
Before joining GFSIS, Dr. Gegeshidze spent an academic year at Stanford University as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar.
Dr.Gegeshidze worked for the Georgian government from 1992-2000 where he served as an Assistant to the Head of State on National Security and a Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the President.
In addition to his native Georgian, Dr. Gegeshidze is fluent in English and Russian. He also speaks French and some oriental languages.
Ekaterina Baramidze has around 20 years of experience in project elaboration and management within international organizations; since 2007 she was actively involved in the EU Georgian Cooperation issues, while working as an EU Institution Building Instruments Expert, she supported the different Georgian line ministries and agencies in the affective use of EU assistant tools like Twinning, TAIEX, SIGMA, etc. She has elaborated practical guidelines for the public servants about the effective application of the TAIEX tool and how to draft institutional Twinning project fiche.
Ekaterina has joined the LMF team since March 2015. At the LMF she is in charge of the overall leadership & management of the LMF projects implementation to ensure effective & efficient follow-up of the execution of individual projects. Support to the review & improvement of the operational procedures of the LMF. The major areas directed are: recruiting & staffing; organizational planning; performance management & improvement systems; organization development; management & coordination of short-term consultants; identification & elaboration of new projects & budgets based on the LMF policy & strategy. Intensive cooperation & communication with relevant state administrations, media & civil society organization working in the field of the EU approximation. Elaboration & Management of the project related activities & dissemination of information about the EU Georgia cooperation among ethnic minorities and other groups. Arrangement & management of public events: public lectures, conferences, roundtable discussions, workshops etc.
Eter Sajaia is the financial manager of the Levan Mikeladze Foundation. She manages professional level accounting functions for the foundation and prepares financial reports for donors. She has more than 20 years of experience in her field (as Chief Accountant and Financial Manager) with numerous different organizations.
Tamta Darsalia joined LMF in May 2019 and is a project assistant and provides technical and logistical support for ongoing projects in the Foundation.
Tamta graduated has a B.A. in International Relations from the Social and Political Science Department of Tbilisi State University. Since 2018, she has been enrolled in the master’s program of National and Ethnic Studies of the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Tbilisi State University.
Until 2016, she worked as an organizer of research projects in an NGO “Youth Generation”. In 2016-2018, she was the head of international projects at the Research Center for Complex Development of Tbilisi State University. Tamta took part in various local and international conferences and projects. She translated several scientific books into Russian and Georgian languages, among them it is worth noting E.Patashnik “Reform at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted”.
