George Shakarishvili is Director of Strategic and Technical Initiatives at TEPHINET. He is a global health specialist with over 20 years of practical experience. Prior to joining TEPHINET he spearheaded the work on health systems strengthening at the Global Fund, developing the new strategy and investment framework, which helped reshape the Fund’s portfolio from vertical/disease-specific programs to cross-program integration and resulted in broader health impact and improved efficiency of primary healthcare systems. His employment record also includes other major global health organizations, such as the World Bank, CDC, WHO, several international implementing agencies in the US and the Ministry of Health of the country of Georgia, where he led the World Bank-funded national health reform program. George is founding Director of the Tbilisi Institute of Global Health and founding Director of the Eurasian Academic Alliance. 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.