Davit Lezhava holds BA degree from Faculty of Physics at Tbilisi State University and is a doctoral candidate of Physical Sciences. Mr. Lezhava also holds MA degree in Economic Growth from Williamson College, USA. David Lezhava has been a deputy Minister of Finance of Georgia Since October 2012. His recent positions include: Adviser of Executive Director at International Monetary Fund-Washington, USA; Chief economist, head of department of macroeconomic researches, member of committee of monetary policy, National Bank of Georgia and Project Coordinator UNDP project: Program and Administration System Upgrading of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, among others.
Mr. Svendsen has a higher degree in Russian and German languages and literature from the University of Oslo. He spent substantial periods studying in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1990ies.
He worked as a Russian interpreter for the Norwegian government on the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard from 1996 until 1998. He then joined the Norwegian Foreign Service. Mr. Svendsen has served as a junior diplomat in Norway’s embassies in Riga, Vienna and Moscow. From 2009-2011 he was Assistant Director General in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs covering bilateral relations with Azerbaijan and the other countries of the South Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova as well as the countries of Central Asia. Mr. Svendsen was Deputy Head of Mission at the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow from 2011-2014. In March 2014, he was appointed Norway’s ambassador to the Republic of Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Rashmi is program Leader for the South Caucasus, working on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, based in Tbilisi, Georgia.She worked in various positions within the Bank, the previous one being Senior Economist for Azerbaijan and Georgia in ECSPE. Before she worked in Latin America and the Caribbean as a Senior Economist and Team Leader on several countries, including Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica and Nicaragua.
Rashmi Shankar has a strong background in leading a wide range of operational and AAA tasks at the Bank. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and was a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Brandeis University before joining the Bank. She has published widely in the fields of international economics, including trade and growth, and macroeconomics.
Professor, Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center; President, CERGE-EI Foundation
Randy is a Senior Fellow of New York's Manhattan Institute, Research Fellow at Institute for Study of Labor (IZA) and the Center for Economic Studies and the Center for Economic research (CESifo).
He serves as a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee of CERGE-EI in Prague. His research is focused on labor, housing and financial markets, and the transition from command economies to free markets.
Chair, Agricultural Policy, Department of Agricultural Economics, Georg-August University Göttingen
Professor Dr. von Cramon-Taubadel is Chair for Agricultural Policy at the Department of Agricultural Economics at the Georg-August University Göttingen. After his studies of agricultural economics at the Macdonald College of McGill University in Montréal and at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada) he obtained his Ph.D. degree and his habilitation degree at the Christian-Albrecht-University in Kiel. The focus of his consulting and research activities is on reforms of the agricultural sector in transition countries as well as the agricultural policy in Germany and the EU.
Professor Dr. von Cramon-Taubadel has been active as a agricultural policy advisor inter alia for the FAO, the World Bank and the German Government. Between 1996 and 2006 he was member of the German Advisory Group on Economic Reforms in Ukraine, which he led between 2004 and 2006. Since 2005 he is Co-Leader of the German Economic Team in Belarus. He is a guest professor at the University of Nanjing and since 2015 the Secretary-Treasurer of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
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