For about as long as Rusudan Goletiani has been playing chess, she has been among the elite players, and that includes the eight years she has spent in the United States. The winner of the 2005 U.S. Women’s Chess Championship says she can’t pick out one or two highlights that stand out. “Every accomplishment means a lot,” she says, adding that her ultimate chess goal is to become a grandmaster.

Rusudan considers the late, great Russian grandmaster Alexander Alekhine as her biggest chess influence and adds that outside of chess she admires “every person that works hard to achieve his or her goal.”

Outside of chess, Rusudan enjoys ping pong, reading and cooking. She is married with a 2-year-old daughter, Sophie, but Rusudan says she doesn’t have much difficult fitting the rigors of chess into her daily life. “I wish I had more time for everything, but somehow I manage it all,” she says. Indeed, her most difficult challenge was moving – from her native country of Georgia to the New York when she was 19. “I did not have a family in New York, and did not know much English,” she says.