Vakhtang "Vakho" Megrelishvili (Georgian: ვახტანგ "ვახო" მეგრელიშვილი, born on February 28, 1972) is a Georgian politician and libertarian activist, a former Deputy Minister of Health, Labor and Social Affairs and a member of Parliament since 2020. He is one of the founders of Girchi, a libertarian political party, and an outspoken unschooling advocate. Biography Early life and career Vakhtang Megrelishvili was born on February 28, 1972, in Telavi, a city in the Kakheti region of then-Soviet Georgia. In 1996, he graduated from the Tbilisi Medical Academy, after which he spent two years in surgical residency. After a short time working as a doctor, he joined the public sector as a staffer for the Health Committee of Parliament in 1999. One year later, he joined the Ministry of Justice, at the time led by Mikheil Saakashvili, as an adviser to its Medical Department. In parallel, Megrelishvili founded the Patients' Rights Union, a non-governmental organization focused on health care, leading it for three years before being appointed as Deputy General Director of the Social Insurance Fund of Georgia. He is married and has three children. Saakashvili administration In 2004, Vakhtang Megrelishvili was appointed as Deputy Minister of Labor, Health and Social Protection in the new government created after the Rose Revolution, serving under the ministership of Vladimer Chipashvili. As such, he was responsible for the oversight of U.S. foreign aid meant to subsidize the electricity supply for schools and hospitals, while rolling out the first welfare program in the country and reforming the pension system, though opposing a universal health insurance system. An advocate for limited government, he has been associated with a drastic decrease in the bureaucracy of the ministry. After leaving the Saakashvili administration in 2007, he became director of the Research Center of the Free University, a libertarian university in Tbilisi founded by Georgia's Economy Minister Kakha Bendukidze. In 2010, he became vice-rector of the Free University's associated academy, the Agrarian University. In the academic sector, he taught critical thinking and political ideologies. He also worked as a consultant at various times for the World Bank, USAID, the European Union, and other donor organizations in the country. Girchi After a short period as Deputy Director General of the Berta industrial group, a corporation affiliated with businessman Tsezar Chocheli, Megrelishvili founded in 2013 the Newton Free School, a private K-12 school in Tbilisi, where he taught economics and chemistry for