IGNITING ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN UNEXPECTED PLACES: AN INTERVIEW WITH SARA ANJARGOLIAN OF IMPACT HUB YEREVAN
Huffington Post
Oct 8 2014
by Carrie Rich , Co-Founder and CEO, The Global Good Fund
About a year ago, I found myself sitting in the least desirable seat
on the plane – the middle of the middle on a massive airliner directly
in front of the restroom. On my left was a man in a grey undershirt,
understated in appearance. Meanwhile his posture was one of dignity
and pride. As I took in the scene, other travelers on the airplane
walked down the aisle, pausing to stare at the man next to me,
continuing on their walk, and then turning around to stare again.
After two or three passengers stopped to stare, I couldn’t help but
ask, “Who are you?”
It turns out my neighbor was Raffi Hovannisian, the first Foreign
Minister of Armenia and founding leader of the national liberal
Heritage party, founder of the Armenian Center for National and
International Studies, Armenia’s first independent research center. So
what did Raffi and I have in common besides both ordering the lasagna
dinner?
Raffi and I had a highly enriching conversation about a topic we both
care about: social entrepreneurship. Our dialogue ultimately led to my
visit in Armenia a year later to soak in the social entrepreneurship
scene and develop strategic partnerships for The Global Good Fund,
the social enterprise I work for.
During my visit, I explored a variety of mediums and key societal
leverage points that reinforce social entrepreneurship – from
Junior Achievement to the Green Bean, the UN to USAID and the State
Department, I discovered that Armenia – and Yerevan in particular –
is ripe with opportunity for social entrepreneurs. It’s an emerging
ecosystem, one that would benefit from global visibility of the social
enterprise foundation that is forming. Particularly compelling are the
individual stories of people, often from the Armenian diaspora, who are
returning home to invest in societal impact through entrepreneurship.
I had the distinct pleasure of meeting one such individual, Sara
Anjargolian, an attorney and multimedia journalist, whose story is
inspiring and beautifully illustrates the power and potential of
social entrepreneurship.
Sara grew up in Los Angeles, California, where there is a large
Armenian community, and learned to speak the language and invest in
the culture. Sara was determined to eventually move to Armenia and
contribute to the country’s redevelopment.
Fast forward to today. Sara and four co-founders – Vahe Keushguerian,
Raffi Kassarjian, Audrey Selian and Narineh Mirzaeian – are launching
Impact Hub Yerevan, Armenia’s first physical space for entrepreneurs
to foster innovation and collaboration. I had the pleasure of getting
to know Sara, learning about her motivations to accelerate social
change in Armenia and listening to her plans for Impact Hub Yerevan.
Here is our interview. I hope you enjoy what Sara shares.
Please tell me about your background:
Sure. I was born in London and spent the first six years of my life in
Tehran. My father is Iranian-Armenian and my mother is Iraqi-Armenian
(Armenians have lived as Christian minorities in countries like Iran
and Iraq and around the globe for centuries). My parents met in the UK
where they were both completing PhDs – my dad in electrical engineering
and my mom in microbiology and cancer research. After my birth, we
moved to Tehran where my father’s family was residing. In 1980-81, as
the Iranian revolution was reaching its peak, we moved to Los Angeles.
I grew up in suburban L.A., went to UCLA for my undergraduate degree
in political science/public policy, and then went on to Berkeley’s
Boalt Hall for law school. My first job out of law school was with
the Department of Justice (DoJ) in DC. After a few years with DoJ,
I was itching for a grand adventure, so I applied for and was granted
a Fulbright scholarship to Armenia. I moved here in 2002.
My Fulbright research focused on analysis of due process and rule
of law in Armenia. During my Fulbright, I also began to discover the
power of visual imagery and multimedia journalism to raise awareness
and inspire action. I stayed in Armenia after completing my Fulbright
for two and a half years, straddling two exciting worlds – I worked
with Bars Media (a documentary film studio in Yerevan) and served as
Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of the American University of
Armenia law department.
Around the end of 2004, I felt it was time to move back to Los Angeles
and resume my legal career. I began working as a policy advisor to the
Los Angeles City Attorney and had the opportunity to work on safety
issues in neighborhoods around Los Angeles and formulate the City
Attorney’s policy objectives. I stayed with the City for about seven
years and grew tremendously during that time, both as an attorney and
as a professional, but something was missing. I had kept my ties with
Armenia strong and spent all my vacation time returning to Armenia
on short term projects.
Something about working in Armenia had stayed with me since my
Fulbright days and in 2012 I decided to move back, this time with
the intention of being part of the nation’s growing civil society
and the wave of social change taking root in the country.
Many of us living in Armenia today and our compatriots within the
Armenian Diaspora have ideas for making the country and the world
a better place, but where does one go to make them happen? This is
where Impact Hub Yerevan comes in.
What inspired you to build Impact Hub Yerevan?
The time is right in Yerevan. It is a city of 1 million in a country
of 3 million in a world of 10 million Armenians. The narrative of
the country is itching to shift from “it cannot be done” to “yes,
it can be done.”
Now, 24-years after independence, a new generation who never
knew the Soviet Union is dusting off the cobwebs of its parents’
generations and is taking responsibility for its own fate. The 20-
to 30-something generation in Armenia is bold, globally connected
and locally invested, they refuse to accept the “that’s just the
way it is here” excuse. Moreover, although seven of the ten million
ethnic Armenians worldwide live outside the Republic of Armenia,
hundreds of thousands of members of the large and influential Armenian
Diaspora engage with the country on a multitude of levels – investing
financially, philanthropically, intellectually and emotionally.
Hub Yerevan is, therefore, in a unique position to draw on
professionals from all over the world – from Buenos Aires, Los Angeles,
Boston, San Francisco, Paris, Moscow, Beirut – just to name a few
of the cities where sizable Armenian communities reside. Impact Hub
Yerevan will serve not only the best and brightest innovators and
creators inside the country, but will act as a bridge and a conduit
between changemakers in the Diaspora and their counterparts inside
Armenia.
We have an impressive founding team which includes Vahe Keushguerian,
Raffi Kassarjian, Narineh Mirzaeian, and Audrey Selian, who is involved
with the Advisory Committees of the Global Impact Hub. We are a team
of individuals with a shared vision consisting of equal parts dream,
skill and professionalism. Together we hold an unwavering desire to
see the country prosper and possess a strong track record of personal
and professional achievements. Take a minute to Google these folks,
you’ll be blown away by their backgrounds and accomplishments.
What are your goals for Impact Hub Yerevan? What benefits will
emerge from building Impact Hub Yerevan, both in Armenia and locally
in Yerevan?
Like a greenhouse for great ideas, Impact Hub Yerevan is where
entrepreneurs and innovators grow their social impact projects and
businesses from concept to implementation to impact. Within our shared
workspace, the goal is to offer thought-provoking programming and
educational events, to house and inspire a community of entrepreneurs,
thinkers, creatives, community builders, investors, policymakers,
developers, artists and many others – all collaborating toward a more
successful Armenia and a better world.
The benefits?
1) Establish entrepreneurship as an essential social impact driver
in Armenia and the Caucasus.
2) Educate and empower the next generation of social entrepreneurs
with the knowledge and skills required in today’s markets.
3) Put into action the top ideas, systems and technologies developed,
thereby creating new companies, organizations and jobs, while firmly
connecting Armenia with global networks of innovators and changemakers.
4) Connect and foster impact projects between social
entrepreneurs/innovators in Armenia and their counterparts within
the Armenian Diaspora.
5) Challenge over-dependence on the State and over-reliance on
international aid and grants and encourage models with long-term
financial sustainability.
You mention that Impact Hub Yerevan is based on the Impact Hub global
structure, yet it will be simultaneously rooted in Armenia’s local
realities. Could you please explain this further?
A Nexis search for “social entrepreneur” yielded 389 english news
stories in 2001 and more than 3,000 in 2011. Armenia is solidly
riding this wave as well, not because it is the newest business school
trend but because our very existence depends on it. In a place where
economic options are limited and where an oligarchy has monopolized
the major industries leaving little room for entry into key markets
the choices left are either recreating oneself through entrepreneurship
and innovation, or leaving the country.
In addition, another shift is occurring – Armenia’s aid days are
coming to an end. Throughout the 1990s crisis period and in the early
2000s, massive amounts of aid were poured into the country. Although
humanitarian assistance was crucial during the early days of
independence, it is imperative that Armenia now shift away from a
focus on charitable initiatives and instead move towards sustainable
development. The Armenian Diaspora’s appetite for charity has been
waning in recent years. Fatigued from pouring money into the country,
Diasporans are shifting from blind giving and armchair philanthropy
toward investable projects with an expectation of blended (social
and financial) return. These individuals seek to support initiatives
that sustain themselves (and Armenia) in the long run. Toward this
end, Hub Yerevan co-founder Audrey Selian has begun to establish a
community of practice among investors who understand risk and the cost
of change through Impact Circle Armenia – an informal online network
of impact investors interested in exploring possibilities in Armenia
and the region.
On the heels of these transitions, Impact Hub Yerevan comes into
existence to provide an inspirational home and a plethora of resources
for both our budding entrepreneurs taking ownership of the country,
and for those who would like to invest in and support them.
Impact Hub is a innovation lab (in cities across the globe) for social
entrepreneurs to collaborate. Why Armenia?
I would say that the main social objective in Armenia is industry
creation coupled with a shift toward an empowering narrative of
the country.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, during the early years of
independence in the early 1990s, the disintegration of all the major
industries, the effects of a devastating earthquake, energy blockades
by Turkey and Azerbaijan, and the Nagorno-Karabakh war paralyzed the
country economically. Armenia hemorrhaged about one fourth of its
population within the first decade.
Despite these challenges, we see great potential within Armenia. What
it lacks in natural resources, it makes up in human brainpower.
Armenia has the highest level of entrepreneurial activity among the
three South Caucasus countries (per a 2013 World Bank report), a 99%
literacy rate, and one of the highest number of per capita chess
grandmasters in the world. Armenia’s highly educated and innovative
population is the country’s greatest asset. Moreover, although Armenia
is ethnically homogeneous, its national identity is made up of a
rainbow of hybrid cultures resulting from its worldwide diaspora –
French-Armenians, American-Armenians, Latin-American Armenians, Middle
Eastern-Armenians, Australian-Armenians and Russian-Armenians. Each
group identifies Armenia as its ancestral homeland, and brings to it
a kaleidoscope of skills, perspectives and resources. Against this
backdrop, the opportunities are significant – for job creation, for
innovation and for entrepreneurship as a response to the shortcomings
of public service delivery, and for scalable interventions that can
be capitalized if the available funding finds the appropriate pipeline.
This is where Impact Hub Yerevan comes in.
Yes we are a country with two closed borders and a frozen conflict –
the Impact Hub Yerevan community will not be defined by those borders,
or by any borders for that matter.
What do you think will be the biggest challenge when you launch Impact
Hub Yerevan?
Social entrepreneurship is a new concept in Armenia. Our nation
is transitioning from a heavy concentration of NGOs and charities
dependent on grants toward an emerging ecosystem comprised of more
sustainable social ventures. While there is positive movement toward
social entrepreneurship, there is still a great deal of effort that
needs to go into educating the general public on the importance of
social entrepreneurship and innovation. To address this challenge,
Impact Hub Yerevan aims to host a wide variety of educational and
networking events for entrepreneurs and innovators as we build our
community. Moreover, our Yerevan Hub community will be connected
to over 50 Hubs worldwide. The knowledge sharing between Hubs is
phenomenal, as intellectual property from one Hub is shared willingly
across all Hubs.
For instance, throughout our onboarding process, Impact Hub Yerevan
received a great deal of information and support from the Founders of
the Hubs in Milan, King’s Cross, and Prague, who have served as direct
mentors and been extremely generous with their time and wisdom. Our
Yerevan team has also visited numerous Hubs around the globe (Athens,
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Singapore, Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, London
and NYC to name a few), so we have a lot of great organizations to
model after.
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carrie-rich/igniting-entrepreneurship_b_5942728.html