Ambassador Tedo Japaridze is a former member of the Georgian Parliament and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee (2012-2016); he served as the Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister of Georgia (2016 -2018). Ambassador Japaridze was the Vice-Chairman for International Relations, at Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC), Tbilisi (2019-2021. Currently Ambassador Japaridze holds the Chairman’s position at the Center for Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Studies (The House of Justice, Tbilisi, Georgia).
His career as a public servant working in various Georgian Governmental agencies has spanned more than three decades; starting with the position of First Deputy Chair of the UNESCO Affairs Council of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Georgia in 1989. He then served as a foreign policy/security issues adviser to President Shevardnadze (1992-1994). In 1994 through 2002 he was appointed as Georgia’s Ambassador to the USA, Canada and Mexico. In 2002 he became the Secretary of the National Security Council and late, in 2004, Georgia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Ambassador Japaridze was the Woodrow Wilson Public Policy Scholar in Washington between 2006 and 2007 and has since held various posts, among others as the President of the Energy Security Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan and the Secretary-General to the Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization (BSEC) in Istanbul, Turkey.
