Mr. Levan Khurtsidze is a Counselor at the Embassy of Georgia to the U.S. Before this assignment he served as a Head of the U.S. and Canada Division in the Department of the Americas at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia. He joined the Georgian Foreign Service in 2009 as the U.S. Desk, and was later transferred to the Political Department as a policy analyst and speechwriter. He then served as a Counselor at the Department of International Organizations. From 2000 to 2006, Mr. Khurtsidze was a senior staffer at the Georgian Parliamentary Committee on Defense and Security where he supervised the Georgia-NATO and U.S.-Georgia relations. Mr. Khurtsidze holds an MA in International Studies from Old Dominion University (2008), an MPA from the Georgian Institute of Public Administration (2004) and an MA and BA in History and Political Science from Tbilisi State University (2004). He also attended the International Defense Resource Management program at the Naval Postgraduate School in California (2005).