Nino Lezhava is an Associate Partner at Elevate Consulting Group and the Executive Director of Elevate Crossroads, a South Caucasus and the Black Sea–focused advisory group providing geopolitical risk analysis, foresight, and strategic intelligence to public and private ventures. Since 2024, she is a Non-Resident Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Ms. Lezhava is a NATO-trained professional with more than a decade of experience in defense and security planning, policy-making, and strategic analysis. She specializes in Black Sea and the South Caucasus security, transatlantic relations, and global geopolitical competition. Currently, her research examines China’s geoeconomic instruments, their implications for regional dynamics, potential realignments, and the interplay with Russia’s longstanding presence.
Previously, she contributed to national security policy-making, defense transformation, and security sector oversight while fostering Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration through different postings at the General Staff of the Georgian Defense Forces, the Parliament of Georgia, and NATO Headquarters.
She lectures at German and Georgian universities, teaching master’s-level courses on national security and transatlantic relations, and publishes regularly with CEPA, New Eastern Europe, and other leading outlets.
She holds a master’s degree in International and European Security from the University of Geneva, an MPA from the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, and a BA in International Relations from Tbilisi State University.