The Georgian Association of America is pleased to announce the election of its new president, Miss Elisabeth “Elisso” Kvitashvili, effective immediately.
Ms. Kvitashvili follows long time president Mr. Mamuka Tsereteli who continues as an active member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer. Ms. Kvitashvili recently retired from United States Government service where she was a member of the Senior Foreign Service and served overseas including in Georgia. She is a first-generation Georgian American whose father, Merab Kvitashvili, is a revered Georgian patriot. She is married with two children.
Here is a more detailed biography:
Elisabeth Kvitashvili recently served as the Mission Director for Sri Lanka and the Maldives before retiring with 36 years of service in Ocrober, 2016. Prior to Sri Lanka she served as Deputy Assistant Administrator in USAID’s Bureau for Middle East with oversight of the Iraq, Jordan and Yemen portfolios. Before joining the Middle East Bureau, she was in Rome, where she served as Humanitarian Affairs Counselor to the U.S. Ambassador, USUN-Rome. Prior to her arrival in Rome, she served as USAID Acting Mission Director in Russia. From 2007-2009 she served as Deputy Assistant Administrator, in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, United States Agency for International Development. She is a career Senior Foreign Service officer with tours in Afghanistan, Russia, Honduras and Italy (Rome) and shortened tours in Pakistan and Bosnia.
She served in Afghanistan, 2002-2003, where she was head of the USAID reconstruction program and Acting Mission Director. In the mid-1980’s she was based in Peshawar, Pakistan where she designed the USAID Cross Border Humanitarian Assistance Program for Afghanistan. During 1997-1998, she traveled for USAID throughout Afghanistan undertaking humanitarian assessments with the UN. She has also spent significant field time in the North and South Caucasus, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bosnia, Rwanda, Burundi, the DRC, Ethiopia and Eritrea working primarily on humanitarian and conflict-related programs. She previously served 3 years as the director of the Disaster Response and Mitigation Division in the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance where she led a number of DARTs and one year in the Office of Transition Initiatives as a senior program officer.
In 2003, she launched USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) serving as director until 2007. While Director of CMM, she led the development of a conflict assessment framework now in use throughout the USG as well as the Fragile States Strategy. She worked with General Petraeus’ staff in the drafting of the US military’s Counterinsurgency Manual and frequently addressed audiences about the nexus of COIN and development. She has authored several pieces on the subject.
She holds a master’s degree in Near East Studies from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and a diploma in international relations from Paris University School of Political Science. She is fluent in French, Spanish, Italian and Russian. She serves as adjunct professor at the Georgetown University where she teaches a graduate-level course on conflict and food security. She is married and has two children.