Board of Trustees

Mrs. Sheehan brings more than 30 years experience in the field of migration, including eight years with IOM in the Caucasus. From 1998-2002 she was the Chief of Mission in Yerevan, and from 1998-2002 she was the Regional Coordinator for the Caucasus based in Tbilisi. After a three year break from the region during which she opened the IOM office in Sri Lanka to provide emergency response, and livelihood replacement for tsunami victims, Mrs. Sheehan returned to Tbilisi as Chief of Mission for the Georgia Office where she currently works.

She has also served as Deputy Director of Volunteer Programs to the Governor of California on issues related to the influx of Southeast Asians after the Vietnam war; Director of the International Catholic Migration Commission training program in Sudan for Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees involved in a U.S. resettlement program; and nine years in a law office dealing with immigration. She began her career with the United Farm Workers Union in California and Arizona, advocating for the rights to unionize and strike, on political campaigns and with voter registration.

Mr Coxshall is an independent consultant working on audit quality and governance issues on a global basis.

From 2009 to 2018 Andrew was the Managing Partner of KPMG in Georgia, a small but rapidly-growing professional services firm providing audit, tax and advisory services to local and international clients in many sectors.

Andrew has over 30 years of experience working in a number of different countries around the world including Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Uganda, Botswana, South Africa and the UK. He specializes in audit and governance issues with experience in the following sectors: communications, financial services, industrial markets, consumer markets, infrastructure, energy, government and healthcare.

Mr. Coxshall holds a Masters of Business Administration from Heriot Watt University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Timothy Blauvelt has served as Country Director in Georgia for American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS since 2003. He first came to Georgia in 1999-2000 as an American Councils and NSEP Boren Fellow to conduct research for his dissertation on citizenship and nationalism in Georgia, which he defended at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2001. After working in Russia and Ukraine, he returned to Georgia as a Visiting Fulbright Scholar in the 2002-03 academic year.

Since 2011 he has also been Associate Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Ilia State University, and he has lectured for a number of years on Soviet history at Tbilisi State University. He is an elected member of the Board of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) and Chairman of the Conference Committee for the CESS 2017 Annual Conference in Seattle and the 2018 Annual Conference in Pittsburgh; a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI); and of the Board of Advisors of the Archival Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. He has published numerous articles on the political history of Russia, the USSR and the Caucasus, on clientalism, nationality policy, language policy, and ethnic mobilization in Europe-Asia Studies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Kritika, War & Society, Caucasus Survey, Nationalities Papers, Central Asian Survey, Ab Imperio, and the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. His co-edited book (together with Jeremy Smith) Georgia after Stalin: Nationalism and Soviet Power was published by Routledge in 2015.

Mr. Beebe-Center is President Emeritus of Eurasia Foundation, having retired in 2018 after 12 years as president and 25 years with the foundation. During his tenure with Eurasia Foundation, under Mr. Beebe-Center’s leadership, special projects such as the economic education and research program and the small business lending program were launched. In addition to his association with the Europe Foundation, Eurasia Partnership Foundation and Caucasus Research Resource Centers in the South Caucasus, Mr. Beebe-Center sits on the boards of several organizations, including the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine, the European Humanities University in Lithuania, and Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia in Kazakhstan.

Prior to joining Eurasia Foundation, Mr. Beebe-Center worked for several years on US-Soviet projects ranging from intergovernmental technical exchanges to commercial joint ventures. Mr. Beebe-Center holds a bachelor’s degree in Soviet Studies from Brown University and a master’s degree in Russian Studies from Harvard University

From 1994-1999, Dr. Tarschys was Secretary General of the Council of Europe. He has also served as Secretary of State in the Swedish Prime Minister’s Office, as a Member of the Swedish Parliament and Chairman of its Standing Committees on Social Affairs and Foreign Affairs. In 2000, Dr. Tarschys represented the Swedish Government in the Convention drafting the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. He chairs the National Council on Medical Ethics and the boards of institutes concerned with educational mobility, growth policy and aging.

Dr. Tarschys has PhDs from Stockholm University and Princeton and an honorary doctorate from Cluj (Romania). His research interests include comparative politics, human rights, public policy, government growth, accountability and budgetary policy. His most recent publication is Reinventing Cohesion: The Future of EU Structural Policy. From 1983-1985, he was Professor of Soviet and East European Studies at Uppsala University. Currently, Dr. Tarschys is Chairman of the Political Science Department at the University of Stockholm.

Ambassador Hall Hall is a former British diplomat with over 30 years’ experience, including as the British Ambassador to Georgia from 2013 to 2016, and as Brexit Counsellor at the British Embassy in Washington until December 2019. Previous roles included postings to Bangkok, Washington, Bogotá, and New Delhi. In London, Ambassador Hall Hall also served as Head of the Middle East Peace process unit, as head of Humanitarian Affairs within the UN department, as head of the Human Rights and Democracy Department, and as an advisor on the European Union in the Cabinet Office. From 2004 to 2006, she was detailed on exchange to the U.S. Department of State, first as a Special Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Rights and Labor; and then with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs working on the Middle East Partnership Initiative. She has taught human rights at George Washington University, and was a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council from 2016 to 2018.