Vano Matchavariani

Vano Matchavariani is an expert on strategic and international affairs and political commentator whose career spans foreign relations, diplomacy, business, academia and the non-profit sector. Most recently, he served as Deputy Secretary of the National Security Council of Georgia. Previously, he was Executive Director of the Georgia Development Foundation, Deputy CEO for External Relations at JSC Partnership Fund, and Advisor on Foreign Relations to President Giorgi Margvelashvili. Mr. Matchavariani served as Ambassador to Japan from 2007 to 2009 and as Ambassador-at-Large/Special Envoy on Energy Security Issues in Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007. From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Matchavariani was in the private sector as Director’s Representative for External Relations for the Australian listed company Bolnisi Gold and then as a member of the Supervisory Board of the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation. From 1998 to 2002, he was Counsellor in the Permanent Mission of Georgia to the United Nations in New York.
In 1997 and 1998, he was Assistant on Foreign Affairs to Chairman of the Parliament
Zurab Zhvania. In 1996, he was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Conflict Management and Resolution at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. From 1996 to 1997, he founded and ran the Georgian office of the NGO Partners for Democratic Change. Mr. Matchavariani holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, a graduate diploma in European Studies from the Central European University (CEU) in Prague, Czech Republic, and an undergraduate diploma from the Georgian Polytechnical University. He has taught foreign policy at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs.