Team Archive

Director

Koba Turmanidze has been working for CRRC-Georgia since 2007. Koba holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from Central European University. He earned an MPA from American University (Washington, DC) and an M.A. in Political Science from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary). He also holds a diploma in history from Tbilisi State University.

From 2005-2011, he was an Assistant Professor at Tbilisi State University, where he taught comparative politics, economies in transition, research methods and applied statistics courses in the Department of Political Science and the Center for Social Sciences.

Before joining CRRC-Georgia, Koba worked in several civil society

Kristina Vacharadze

Programs Director

Kristina Vacharadze joined CRRC-Georgia in 2006 as a Program Manager. In 2009, she was promoted to Programs Director. Kristina manages a variety of research projects. She also participates in questionnaire development, and in qualitative and quantitative analyses.

Kristina holds a bachelor’s degree in Western European Languages and Literature from Iv. Javakhishvili State University and a master’s degree in Gender Studies from Central European University. Prior to joining CRRC, Kristina worked as the South Caucasus Regional Coordinator for the Academic Fellowship Program at OSGF. Previously, she was the Caucasus Program Assistant at the Civic Education

Giorgi Babunashvili

Senior Policy Analyst

Giorgi Babunashvili joined CRRC-Georgia in 2008. He is a researcher and works on survey sampling, dataset cleaning, development of research instruments, data procession and analysis. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Comparative Politics at Ilia State University, department of Political Sciences. He holds an M.A. in International Relations from Tbilisi State University and has taken courses in survey sampling and statistics at University of Michigan and University of Ljubljana.

Prior to joining CRRC, Giorgi worked as a Lead Research Associate in a team evaluating the Ilia Chavchavadze Program for Reforming and Strengthening Georgian Secondary Education System, as a Research

Mariam Kobaladze

Senior Researcher

Mariam Kobaladze has been working at CRRC-Georgia since 2009. First, she joined the organization as a participant of the Junior Fellowship Program (JFP). Later, she became a research associate and a researcher. She acted as a Communications Manager between 2018 and 2020, and since 2021 is a Senior Researcher, combining both communication works as well as research design and analysis.

Mariam Kobaladze holds a B.A. in English language from Ilia State University and an M.A. in Social and Political Sciences from Tbilisi State University, Center for Social Sciences.

Prior to joining CRRC, Mariam worked with a long-term observation team for parliamentary elections in 2008. She was NDI’s

Dr. Tamar Khoshtaria

Senior Researcher

Tamar Khoshtaria has been working for CRRC-Georgia since 2009. She started as a Junior Fellow (as part of the JFP program) and then became a researcher. Now she is a senior researcher. Tamar works on questionnaire development and qualitative and quantitative data analysis. She participates in designing research projects.

Tamar holds a PhD in Sociology from the Tbilisi State University, where she teaches quantitative and qualitative research methods. She holds her B.A. and M.A. in Social Science (Sociology) from the same university. During her M.A. she was awarded a scholarship and studied at the Humboldt-University Berlin for one year where she conducted qualitative research

Keti Japaridze

Operations Manager

Keti Japaridze has been working at CRRC-Georgia since 2006. She provides support to all the organization’s activities. Prior to joining CRRC-Georgia, Keti worked as an administrative/program assistant for Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Before this, she was an administrative assistant at the Philip Morris Management Services. She is a graduate of Tbilisi State University.

Nino Stavridi

Communications and Development Officer

Prior to becoming the Regional Communications and Development Officer for Eurasia Partnership Foundation/CRRC Regional Network, Nino worked as Regional Executive Secretary for EPF/CRRC Network and as Executive Assistant to the President for EPF. Before joining EPF in 2008, Nino worked as Head of the International Department at Georgian Trade Unions Confederation, and as an Assistant to the Economic Attaché at the Embassy of Greece in Tbilisi.

Nino has a Masters’ Degree in Public Relations from Georgian Technical University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Greek Language and Literature from Tbilisi State University. Her Masters’ thesis is about the role

Elza Narimanishvili

Admin-Finance Manager

Elza Narimanishvili joined CRRC-Georgia in June 2013. Before joining CRRC, Elza worked as a Finance Manager at Save the Children International. She has more than ten years of experience in financial management, accounting, taxation budgeting, and donor reporting. She has managed several international donor funded grants and sub-grants.

Elza holds a Masters’ degree in Philology from Iv. Javakhishvili State University, and a diploma in English Language and Literature from the same university.

In 2003, Elza was awarded certificate of International Accounting Standards and Tax Systems by the Georgian Federation of Professional Accountants and Auditors

Dustin Gilbreath

Non-resident senior fellow

Dustin joined CRRC in 2014, as an international fellow. From 2018 to 2022, he served as CRRC-Georgia’s Deputy Research Director, after previously being a research consultant and policy analyst. He is currently a non-resident senior fellow.

Prior to joining CRRC, he worked as an English teacher, freelance writer, editor and translator, and then as a lecturer in tourism geography at Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University. Dustin holds an MA in Political Science from Central European University and a BA in Philosophy from Skidmore College.

His research interests include applications of matching in evaluation contexts, quasi-experimental design, and political communications.

Anano Kipiani

Policy Analyst

Anano Kipiani took up the Policy Analyst position at CRRC-Georgia in 2016. Her main duties and responsibilities include determining impediments to agricultural insurance uptake in Georgia, providing input on research design, conducting interviews with key informants in the public and private sectors, and supporting qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

Anano holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from ISET – International School of Economics at TSU. Her master’s thesis discussed the state of food security and its measurement methodologies in Georgia. She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Informatics from TSU. Before joining CRRC, Anano