George Shakarishvili is a global health specialist with over 20 years of practical experience. His employment record includes the Ministry of Health of Georgia, where he led the World Bank-funded national health reform implementation unit, the World Bank, CDC, WHO and several international health NGOs in Washington, DC. Most recently, he worked at the Global Fund for HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva, where he led the development of the new strategy and investment framework for health systems strengthening. This work has helped reshape the Fund’s portfolio from vertical/disease-specific programs to cross-program integration, resulted in broader health impact beyond the three diseases and improved efficiency and performance of national health systems.

George was a founding Director of the Tbilisi Institute of Global Health in the Republic of Georgia and founding Director of the Eurasian Academic Alliance for Global Health – both aimed at advancing global health as an academic discipline in Georgia and across the Eastern Europe/Central Asia region. He has authored three books and over 20 peer-reviewed publications on a wide range of global health and health policy issues. George holds MD, MPH and PhD degrees from Tbilisi, Boston and Oxford universities respectively. He is a recipient of the Velji Faculty Award for Global Health Innovation from the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) for developing a virtual reality technology-based training module on managing Ebola outbreak in low/middle-income countries.

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