Abakhon Sultonnazarov is in charge of overall management, strategic planning, financial reporting, project delivery and human resources across the Central Asian region. He joined IWPR with 15 years’ management experience with the UN and other international organisations in Central Asia, Afghanistan and USA. Expert on Central Asian regional politics and human rights with proven abilities of establishing successful relationships with national governments, international organizations, donors and partners.

Beka Bajelidze joined IWPR in 2004 to manage IWPR’s projects in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as in the republics of the North Caucasus. Before that, he worked as project manager with the OSCE and project assistant with the US National Democratic Institute. He has a degree in foreign languages and a master’s degree in public administration from the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. Beka is a native speaker of Georgian, fluent in English, Russian and proficient in Turkish.

Seda Muradyan was born in Yerevan, and has a degree in television journalism from Yerevan State Pedagogical University and a master’s degree in journalism from the Caucasus Institute based in Armenia. She has completed journalism courses at Radio Netherlands Training Centre and the University of Florida. She began working at A1+TV Yerevan-based television company in 1996 as a reporter, anchor and editor-in-chief of the Ayb-Fe News show. In 2002, the TV company was banned from the airwaves. That same year, Seda joined the Caucasus Institute CI, a new media think tank, where she coordinated journalism and photojournalism projects. In 2003, Seda spent six months in the US researching the experience of embedded journalists. She came to IWPR in 2005, as Armenia Editor and Country Director. In 2008, Seda produced her first documentary “From Home to Home”, about Azerbaijanis and Armenians who still honour a pledge to care for the graves left behind as communities fled. In 2010-11, Seda spent time at Stanford University as a Knight Fellow, where she developed a new concept for a citizen reporting platform in Armenia. She is a board member of the Regional Studies Centre in Armenia and a member of the advisory board of SochiReporter.ru, a citizen reporting platform in Russia.

Alexandra Kazakova has 15 years of management experience in international and national development programmes that focused on civil society capacity-building and advocacy initiatives in Kazakhstan. Her experience in Central Asia has equipped her with an extensive knowledge of the social, economic and political matters of the region. Her career includes liaising and promoting partnerships between the State, non-governmental and international actors, developing and supervising effective advocacy and social research. Ms. Kazakova also managed international donor funded programmes, a series of signature advocacy support programmes, issue-based national advocacy campaigns to strengthen the democratic culture in Kazakhstan and to muster more than $4 million for development projects. In addition, she has established four policy-based partnerships with local government bodies. As a freelance researcher, she has conducted more than ten independent research projects, which included developing methodology, quantitative and qualitative indicators, research tools, field work, data analysis and reporting. She also conducted over ten needs’ assessments on various social issues in civil society, health and on government transparency.

Lola Olimova (Khalikjanova) is a professional journalist. Before joining IWPR in 2006, she worked as deputy editor-in-chief of the social and political weekly ‘Business & Politics’, and simultaneously headed the international department at the Russian-Tajik (Slavonic) University. She has also worked as a presenter on Tajik national TV and as editor-in-chief of the Russian service of the state news agency Khovar.

Gulafshon serves as Programmme Coordinator & Investigative Journalism Mentor for the IWPR Tajikistan. She is responsible for mentoring, editing, and producing journalistic investigations developed by IWPR trainees. Gulafshon has graduated from the Department of Journalism of Tajik National University (TNU) in 2007. She started her professional career as a reporter of the Tajik language newspaper Ruzi Nav (New Day) in 2003 while being a university student. Then she continued her journalistic experience in several other independent Tajik papers such as Farazh and Samak. At the same time Ms. Soqieva taught investigative journalism at the TNU. Gulafshon joined IWPR in 2013.