His Excellency Mikheil Saakashvili

Mikheil Saakashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia on December 21, 1967, the eldest of three brothers. After graduating with honors from the prestigious Kiev University Institute of International Relations, he moved to the U.S. to attend Columbia University as an Edmund S. Muskie Fellow. He received a Masters degree in law in 1995.

In 1995 Saakashvili was elected to the Georgia Parliament. In 2000 he was appointed Minister of Justice of Georgia where he continued to confront and investigate post-Soviet Georgian corruption at the highest levels. His drastic judicial reforms improved the country's judicial system so effectively that they were noted with praise by the president of the World Bank.

As a result of falsified 2003 Parliamentary election results, Mikheil Saakashvili and the late deputy Zurab Zhvania united to reject the election results and called on the public to protest, beginning the Rose Revolution. The revolution culminated in Saakashvili peacefully leading a group of courageous visionaries through the doors of the Parliament. On November 23, 2003 Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as President of Georgia. And on January 4, 2004 the people of Georgia elected Mikheil Saakashvili as their President. At 37-years-old, Mikheil Saakashvili became the youngest national president in Europe.

President Saakashvili was elected for his second term in 2008. As the president of Georgia, he has fought against corruption in all forms and manifestations without compromise. After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili expanded the Georgian economy into new innovative and international markets, where it had not previously existed. The outcome has been a rapidly developing, uncorrupt and modernized Georgia, which has become an inspiration for the entire region.