IESC Announces Tarek Nabhan International Achievement Award Winner, Keti Rekhviashvili

Established in 2013, the Tarek Nabhan International Achievement Award recognizes staff members in our overseas offices who regularly go above and beyond their normal job responsibilities to achieve excellence. The award is named after Tarek Nabhan in recognition of his 31 years of service to IESC.

For 2023, we honored the winner of the award, Keti Rekhviashvili, who has worked with IESC on two USAID programs in Georgia. Keti worked with IESC for four years starting in 2005. As the public relations manager for the USAID Small and Medium Enterprise Support Project, she communicated the program’s impressive activities and accomplishments. She returned to IESC in 2021 and since then has played a crucial role in helping win the bid for the USAID Industry-led Skills Development Program. Her stakeholder outreach efforts greatly contributed to the number of grant applications received from potential partners, leading to nearly $100 million in cash and in-kind support for proposed skills development projects.

Keti continues to do excellent work planning high-profile events, overseeing media relations, and promoting success stories. Nutsa Shavladze, director of communications of the Business Association of Georgia, a program participant and grantee, says Keti “consistently demonstrates a strong understanding of effective communication techniques and is skilled in creating compelling content that resonates with target groups. She is able to convey complex ideas in a clear and concise manner, making them highly effective in delivering key messages.”

The program offered six-month internships to college students and recent graduates to learn about the field of international development and gain job skills. Keti went above and beyond when mentoring six communications interns, ensuring they got meaningful, hands-on experience and understood the role of a communications professional. Four of the six interns are already professionally employed in part thanks to the skills they learned from Keti.