Sandra E. Roelofs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sandra E. Roelofs

Born	23 December 1968 Terneuzen, Netherlands
Education	International Institute for Human Rights
Known for	Spouse of the President of Georgia
Term	25 January 2004 - 25 November 2007, 20 January 2008 –
Predecessor	Nanuli Shevardnadze
Spouse	Mikheil Saakashvili
Children	Eduard and Nikoloz Saakashvili

Sandra Elisabeth Roelofs (born December 23, 1968) is the Dutch-born First Lady of Georgia, the wife of President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili. Roelofs acquired Georgian citizenship in January 2008 and is now a dual Dutch-Georgian citizen.^[1]

Sandra E. Roelofs was born in Terneuzen, the Netherlands. She graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages in Brussels and the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She met Mikheil Saakashvili in 1993 while attending a course on human rights in Strasbourg and later that year moved to New York where she worked at Columbia University and a Dutch law firm. In 1996 the couple returned to Georgia, where Roelofs worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Consulate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tbilisi.

From 1999 to 2003, Sandra E. Roelofs was a visiting lecturer at Tbilisi State University, where she also worked on her doctoral thesis on linguistic aspects of French in Belgium. Aside from her native Dutch, Sandra E. Roelofs speaks French, English, German, Russian and fluent Georgian.

Roelofs and Saakashvili have two sons, Eduard and Nikoloz.

She is an author of an autobiographic book The Story of an Idealist (2005).

[edit] Charity Work

In 1998 Roelofs founded charity foundation SOCO[1] which has the primary focus of implementing the programs funded by western European and Georgian companies and individuals and is aimed at supporting low income families. Since setting new targets in 2007, SOCO has been actively taking care of reproductive health and child welfare in Georgia.