Sophie Shevardnadze


Sophie Shevardnadze is a Georgian/Russian journalist, presenter, author and producer. She is the creator and executive producer of the show Simply Complicated on the platform Yandex.Efir, Russia's equivalent of Google. She is the host of SophieCo Visionaries, and between 2006-2015 she was a presenter on the radio station Echo of Moscow.

Biography

Sophie Shevardnadze was born on September 23, 1978 in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. She studied in Tbilisi until the 8th grade at public school No 55 and developed an early passion for dance and music, learning the piano and taking up ballet.
Much of her childhood coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union. Due to having career politicians in the family, her late grandfather being the last foreign minister of the USSR and leader of Georgia, Sophie was one of few within the bloc that could travel at the time. She often moved between Moscow and Tbilisi until the age of 10, before eventually going to Paris where her father worked in the diplomatic service. It was a turbulent time for many at the end of the 90s and Sophie had to adapt quickly, not knowing either French or English language. She graduated from École Active Bilingue and the :fr:Conservatoire_international_de_musique_de_Paris|Conservatoire International de Musique de Paris with double qualifications from the British and French Educational systems with top grades.
When she was just 17, Sophie entered the Social Communications Department at Boston University, a year earlier than most of her peers, and later transferred in her second year to Emerson College to focus on a major in Cinema Studies. She graduated from the Bachelor's programme with honors.
Sophie continued her post-graduate studies in TV journalism at New York University, where she also achieved honors. During her college years, she took a hands-on approach to journalism by completing an internship as a producer for the channel ABC. This shaped a lot of early influences in her media career, and she says the late anchor Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters as interviewers inspired her.

Family

Father — Paata Shevardnadze, Doctor of Philological Science in the USSR, author of philological and philosophical studies, international diplomat, worked as a career diplomat with UNESCO for 20 years.
Mother — Nina Akhvlediani, philologist, English language specialist, literary translator from French and English into Georgian.
Brother — Lasha Shevardnadze, entrepreneur. Sisters — Mariam and Nanuli Shevardnadze. Nanuli is a graduate of New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Grandfather — Eduard Shevardnadze, Soviet and Georgian politician. The USSR's last Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second President of Georgia. In Sophie's teenage years, she attended a number of high-level meetings along with her grandfather. Eduard Shevardnadze is credited by many as someone who had a huge influence on ending the Cold War and paving the way for modern Georgia.

Career

Simply Complicated

On October 22, 2019, the platform Yandex.Efir premiered the talk show Simply Complicated with Shevardnadze as host. The program was the very first to be shot in 4K format and is available on what is Russia's equivalent site of Google. As of now, more than 15 million people have watched the show. In a TED-talk format, Sophie speaks with visionaries from the digital and social media era, often with a focus on culture, science, business and politics. Many prominent guests have appeared on the show from the music and film industries, Science - including cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky. While other episodes delve into AI, street art and religion in modern society. Since March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show has gone remote using the teleconference platform Zoom.

SophieCo Visionaries

In September 2019, Shevardnadze released her own program SophieCo Visionaries in English. She meets with those breaking down barriers in their fields or guests with a cutting-edge take on the present and future: from neuroscience to art and quantum physics. Guests include: artist Ai Weiwei, architect Rem Koolhaas, British neurosurgeon Henry Thomas Marsh, and German director and screenwriter Veren Herzog. Since the turn of the year, many of the episodes look at where and how the world might develop post-coronavirus.

SophieCo

In 2013, Shevardnadze's debut program premiered on the TV channel Russia Today; meeting with world politicians, leaders and newsmakers. While the show was running, Sophie became the first journalist in Russia and the second in the World to travel to Syria, during the war in 2013, to interview Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Other

Sophie prides herself on having worked for a number of different media networks which cross all political divides. She is a firm believer that one of the best ways to deliver the truth to viewers is through interviews, giving the blunt views of guests and challenging them on key ideas and opinions.

ABC

2001-2003, Sophie completed an internship as a producer for the American television channel ABC.

"Imedi" TV channel

Since 2004 Sophie has been a permanent judge on the Georgian version of the TV show "Dancing with the Stars". Now in its ninth season, she has been a judge alongside the famous flamenco dancer, Joaquin Cortes. Dance and ballet have been an important part of Sophie's life since she was a child, and she proved it was more than just a passion when she became a finalist in the Russian version of the show.
For two years from 2003, Shevardnadze was a correspondent on the program "Droeba" from New York and Paris.

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Since September 2016, Sophie has hosted the talk show "About Love" on Russia's “Channel One” dedicated to solving family problems alongside musician Sergey Shnurov.

[Echo of Moscow] radio station

2014-2015 Sophie was co-host on the program "Cover" with Alexander Plushev.
2008-2014 co-host on "With my own eyes" with Olga Bychkova.
2006-2008 co-host of the "Hearing Test" program with Vitaliy Dymarsky.
Shevardnadze also writes interview columns for GQ, Esquire, Kommersant and Russian Pioneer.

Moderator

Sophie frequently moderates international/Russian panel discussions and public speaking events. Those have included UN events, Ambrosseti, and the Eurasian Forum.
On June 7, 2019, she moderated a discussion between world leaders during a plenary session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Among the participants were Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, the head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, and other heads of state. Shevardnadze became the first domestic journalist to be given the role.

Social activism

Since 2005, she has been on the Board of Trustees for the Vera Hospice Charity Fund.
While from 2018, she has been on the board of the Friends charity foundation, which helps systematize the charity industry and ensure professional standards.
Shevardnadze is on the Board of Directors for the World Teacher Prize and the Russian Academy of Television.
She was also a guest speaker at Harvard and Yale universities on international relations and modern media.

Facts

During her college years, Sophie was a bit of an adrenaline junkie completing 27 parachute jumps in a year.
Finalist of the project Dancing with the Stars on Russia-1 TV channel with partners: professional dancer Denis Kasper and actor Ivan Oganesyan.
Fluent in Georgian, Russian, French, English, and Italian.