Mikheil Saakashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia on December 21, 1967, the eldest of three brothers. After graduating with honors from the prestigious Institute of International Relations of Kiev University he moved to the U.S. to attend Columbia University in New York City as an Edmund S. Muskie Fellow. He received an LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 1994. From 1995 to 1996 he studied law at the doctoral level at The George Washington University National Center of Law in Washington, D.C.

In 1995 he was admitted to the New York Bar and practiced commercial law for nearly a year at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in NYC. In 1995 he became the first former Soviet citizen to obtain a prestigious diploma in Comparative Law on Human Rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg. 

As a member of the Human Rights Committee of Georgia he secured prisoner exchange agreements between Georgians and Abkhazs and also between Armenians and Azeris captured in the fighting for Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1992 at the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, he organized a conference between Georgians and South Ossetians, which resulted in signing the first ceasefire agreement.

In 1995 Saakashvili was elected to the Georgian Parliament initiating Georgia's first merit-based selection of judges. He also became the First Minister of Justice to address prison reform. On October 12, 2000 he was appointed Minister of Justice of Georgia where he continued to confront and investigate post-Soviet Georgian corruption of at the highest levels. Despite threats of reprisal and personal danger, he relentlessly exposed the wrongdoing and went public with hard evidence of governmental corruption by senior officials. His drastic judicial reforms improved the country's judicial system so effectively that they were noted with praise by the president of the World Bank.

As a result of falsified 2003 Parliamentary election results, Mikheil Saakashvili and the late Member of Parliament Zurab Zhvania united to reject the election results and called on the public to protest, beginning the Rose Revolution. The revolution culminated in Saakashvili peacefully leading a selected group of courageous visionaries through to the doors of the Parliament. Lifting up his hands to show he was unarmed, Saakashvili held up a single red rose.

On November 23, 2003 Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as President of Georgia. And on January 4, 2004 the people of Georgia elected Mikheil Saakashvili as their President with 96 percent of the votes. 37-year-old Mikheil Saakashvili became the youngest national president in Europe. 

On January 25, 2005, U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain nominated Georgian President Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Prize praising his "extraordinary commitment to peace ... to the universal values of democracy, individual liberty, and civil rights". Saying that, " thanks to his efforts, the people of Georgia are now constructing new societies based on the rule of law ... resolving peacefully the complex ethnic and social issues that have in the past threatened to divide their nation." 

"Misha," as he is affectionately known, was elected for his second term on January 5 , 2008 with 53.4 percent of votes. As the president of Georgia, Saakashvili fought against corruption in all forms and manifestations without compromise. After the Rose Revolution, Russia, Georgia's primary economic partner, boycotted all Georgian imports. Where some would have accepted economic defeat, President Mikheil Saakashvili reached out to new global markets. At a time when Georgia's economy should have collapsed, President Saakashvili and his administration expanded the Georgian economy into new innovative and international markets, where it had not previously been presented.

The outcome has been a rapidly developing, uncorrupt and modernized Georgia, which has become an inspiration for the entire region. Instead of a post-Soviet nation economically propped up by Russia, Georgia has now its own independent economy as well as its own sovereign democracy. Georgia's capital city, Tbilisi, and the port of city Batumi, serve as testaments to the success of the economic strategy of Saakashvili’s administration.  The challenges are still vast, but this tiny country's progress proves that it continues to move in the right direction. 

As a leader in the entire Caucuses region, Saakashvili committed nearly 1,000 battle ready Georgian soldiers to fight primarily alongside the U.S. Marines in Helmand Province. On December 19, 2009, he was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying:

“The test of the bonds among nations is not what we do when it is easy, but rather what we do when it is hard. Georgia has been grateful for the extent to which the U.S. and Europe have stood alongside us over recent years. Now we are proud to stand and fight alongside you.”

After the end of the presidential term Mikheil Saakashvili received a high academic position (Senior Statesman)  at Taft University designed specially for him. In 2014 in New York, he founded the International Institute of New Leadership www.nilinstitute.org

In the winter of 2014, Saakashvili was actively involved in the Ukrainian Maidan events. On December 6, 2014, a Warsaw-based "Casimir Pulaski Foundation," awarded Saakashvili with the "Knight of Freedom" Award.  On February 13, 2015  Saakashvili was appointed by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko as head of the International Advisory Council on Reforms.

On May 30,2015  Saakashvili  was appointed governor of the Odessa region.