Background
Born in Tbilisi, Maia Panjikidze is the daughter of the writer Guram Panjikidze.
Diplomat Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia
Born in Tbilisi, Maia Panjikidze is the daughter of the writer Guram Panjikidze.
Tbilisi State University.
Formerly a teacher of German, she joined the Georgian diplomatic service in 1994 and was appointed as in the cabinet of Bidzina Ivanishvili on October 25, 2012. She resigned November 5, 2014 in protest of Irakli Alasania being relieved of his position as Minister of Defense. A philologist trained at the universities of Tbilisi and Jena, she taught German in Tbilisi before joining the foreign service in 1994.
Most of her career was associated with the Georgian embassy in Berlin.
She briefly served as Deputy Foreign Minister in 2004 and became Georgia"s ambassador to Germany from 2004 to 2007 and to the Netherlands from 2007 to 2010. She functioned as the Ivanishvili-led coalition"s spokesperson and head of its central office throughout the uneasy election campaign.
In her first comments as a minister, she said Georgia"s foreign policy priorities such as the European and Euro-Atlantic integration, strategic partnership with the United States, and good relations with neighbors would remain unchanged. Panjikidze also added that the new government would try to normalize relations with Russia, but Georgia would not restore diplomatic ties as long as Russia, an occupying country, maintained its embassies in Georgia"s breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
In February 2012, Panjikidze joined the ranks of opposition as a spokesperson for Bidzina Ivanishvili, a multi-billionaire businessman who set up the political party Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia in order to challenge the incumbent United National Movement in the October 1 parliamentary election. After the Georgian Dream"s victory in the 2012 parliamentary election, Panjikidze was appointed as Foreign Minister in the cabinet of now-Prime Minister Ivanishvili on October 25, 2012.