Head of External Affairs

Besides the fact that Sopha Gujabidze has a Master’s Degree in Languages and Translation, she has been working in the field of Communication & Outreach for the whole duration of her professional experience. She joined ISET in 2008. Initially she was in charge of managing the Academic Affairs Department, handled relations with students and alumni and oversaw admissions, placement and other interesting activities.

From 2018 Sopha became the head of External Affairs Department and is responsible for the communication and outreach for both ISET and ISET Policy Institute.

Joining ISET on the very first stage gave Sophio the opportunity to establish lasting traditions and safeguard the corporate culture of the school. 

Statistician

Shota Natenadze received his Bachelor's degree in Economics from Tbilisi State University in 2017, specializing in Quantitative Economics, and earned his Master's degree in Economics from the International School of Economics at TSU (ISET) in 2020; his MA thesis focused on Modern Data Analysis.

Deputy Director for Finance & PI

Prior to joining ISET, Bakari Baratashvili was an Assistant Professor at the American University of the Middle East in Kuwait where he spent 6 years and during this time he also occupied various team-leading positions, including Academic Operations, Accreditation and Compliance, and Academic Advising. Before that, Bakari worked as a Bank Supervisor at the National Bank of Georgia in 2012-2013 and as a Senior Specialist at the Ministry of Finance of Georgia in 2009-2012. During these years he completed various courses and training at IMF Institute and World Bank. Bakari also has taught economics, finance and statistics courses at TSU, Ilia Uni, Caucasus University, Black Sea University, and Eastern European University. He holds a PhD in Business Administration from Georgian Technical University, Tbilisi, Georgia. He also studied at Rice University, USA, and is an ISET class 2008 graduate.

Project Officer

Mason Soule is a Project Officer at ISET-PI, where he is responsible for identifying grant opportunities and international collaborations, and for supporting proposal and business development with the five thematic centers. He is a PhD Candidate (ABD) regional economist from Indiana University. He completed a long career in contract research – proposing, organizing, managing, and evaluating programs and assessing technologies associated with national security-related industries for Battelle Memorial Institute. On a recent Tbilisi-based program funded by the US Government, Mr. Soule was Battelle’s expat Country Officer in Georgia, leading commercialization and sustainability activities aimed at identifying international business and scientific collaborators for the Lugar Center laboratory and for the Georgian animal and human health bio-laboratory network. For over a decade he also was a key organizer of an annually held chemical-biological-nuclear defense conference supported by the governments of Croatia, Georgia, and Switzerland, and which was twice hosted in Tbilisi by the State Security Service.