Marika Mkheidze currently serves as Advocacy and Partnerships Lead at Save the Children International’s Georgia Country Office. In her work, Marika often navigates nuanced and important relationships that have a substantial impact on her organization’s mission. Critical work such as hers requires both a clear strategy and proper communication of that strategy; these challenges are what led her to enroll in the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Executive Education program Nonprofit Management and Leadership: Strategies for Organizational Success.
“While supporting groups who are not always seen as public actors, including children, ethnic minorities, and young women, I often faced situations where the goal was clear, but the path forward was not,” she said. “We needed better ways to explain our work to different audiences, manage trade-offs with donors and partners, and stay true to our values while remaining realistic about influence and risk. The Nonprofit Management and Leadership program directly addressed these tensions.”
As Marika immersed herself in the curriculum alongside HKS faculty and her global cohort, she became equipped with the tangible and specific tools needed to both advance Save The Children’s strategy, as well as keep all stakeholders properly informed. “The program gave me language, structure, and the confidence to explain our strategy in ways that resonate with decisionmakers: timing, legitimacy, and realistic trade-offs. That changed how I lead both internally and with external partners,” she said.
Those acquired skills empowered Marika to return to Save The Children with new approaches to her daily work. She said, “After my time at HKS, one clear shift was how I negotiated influence. When urged to scale ‘successful’ pilots prematurely, I used the frameworks to explain why timing, legitimacy, and community consent had to come first. The shift allowed me to protect communities I worked with and strengthen long-term outcomes without compromising donor relationships.”
Not only did her learnings shape her communication style, but they also allowed her to view obstacles through a new lens. “The frameworks also helped me reframe setbacks,” she explained. “In one case, a community initiative underperformed against numeric targets. Rather than defending the numbers, I led a team reflection that repositioned the work. We showed that cautious pacing had preserved trust in a politically sensitive area. Without the tools I gained at HKS, that moment might have been seen as failure. Instead, it became a lesson in adaptive strategy.”
The program’s curriculum continues to inform crucial work at Save The Children. Marika said, “These lessons shaped how we implemented Georgia’s first child-led Sustainable Development Goals Scorecard. We trained child facilitators to gather peer feedback, assess service gaps, and engage municipalities with specific asks. Children shaped its direction from the start, and we used the HKS decision logic to ensure that both community actors and local officials understood the value of that role.”
In addition to her role at Save The Children, Marika also lends her expertise to other foundations, bringing the knowledge she gained at HKS with her. “As a child rights consultant with ACT Global - one of the largest independent research and consulting firms working with development actors in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, I adhere closely to the standards introduced through the HKS program. I begin each assignment by defining the decision logic, legitimacy pathways, and capacity constraints that shape impact. I also bring this approach to my current consultancy work with UNFPA, where adolescent participation and local service reform demand the same clarity of purpose, trusted positioning, and practical decision-making spine.”
As she looks towards the future of her work, the path forward that was previously unclear now has definitive next steps. “Going forward, I plan to apply these tools to support inclusive systems reform at scale—helping governments and UN actors design youth initiatives that strengthen adolescent participation, align with local political structures, and remain feasible for governments to implement under real constraints,” she says.
Marika’s mission to be a voice and advocate for the children of her country remains at the center of everything she does; as an alumnus of Nonprofit Management and Leadership, she now approaches that work with the same vigor, but with an enhanced level of skill and a reimagined perspective. As she puts it, “The program sharpened how I define success: not just by program outputs, but by the trust, alignment, and lasting influence we build.”