As President of INQAAHE, Dr. Karakhanyan currently leads the global network of tertiary education providers, which brings together more than 300 members worldwide. She is the founding member and Past President of the Accreditation Commission of the National Center for Professional Education Quality Assurance in Armenia as well as guided revisions of external and internal QA systems in a diversity of contexts globally. Currently, she is employed by the Abu Dhabi Government as Higher Education Policy & Regulation Director at the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge in the United Arab Emirates.

Dr. Karakhanyan’s expertise evolves around tertiary education in general and policymaking, governance and quality assurance in particular. Her expertise has been widely sought after by a diversity of systems and cultures. She authors and delivers capacity building events and external reviews of governance structures, legal frameworks and QA systems worldwide. She has authored, initiated and has been implementing a variety of projects under the auspices of the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, Open Society Institute, IREX, to name some. All the projects address higher education reforms in general and diversity of aspects in legal frameworks, governance and quality assurance, in particular. Her service has been acknowledged through such awards as a Gold Medal from the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia, an Honorary Plaque for Excellence in Teaching, to name but a few.

Dr. Karakhanyan holds M.S.Ed in Educational Administration/Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, the USA and PhD in Social Sciences from Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research interests focus around higher education governance and administration, reforms, policymaking, policy diffusion and transfer, and external and internal quality assurance. Her research background has helped her tremendously in the establishment of new and evaluation/review of existing tertiary education systems, including, but not limited to external and internal (both quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions) quality assurance systems in a diversity of contexts at the global level.