She earned her BA in International Relations from Almaty State University and MA in Euro-Asian Studies (with Distinction) from the University of Reading (United Kingdom). In 1998-1999 she attended National Taiwan Normal University (Mandarin Training Center).

For several years Togzhan worked as a journalist for major newspapers in Almaty writing on topics related to international politics. She was a Senior Researcher for a UK FCO/Global Opportunities Fund project in Almaty in 2004-2006, and an Affiliated Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies at Leiden, The Netherlands, in 2006. Since 2006, she has been an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research.

She is the author of From Antagonism to Partnership: the Uneasy Path of the U.S.-Russian Cooperative Threat Reduction (ibidem-Verlag/Stuttgart) published in 2007.